COI016: Sometimes stuck is stuck, fate is fate and luck is luck

And Felix learned quick the path of which and where to stick

PREVIOUSLY ON COLORS OF INSOMNIA: I wrote about Head Automatica’s unreleased third album, Swan Damage, then went and got myself into a serious car accident. That was one year ago today. In many ways, it feels like it was yesterday. I still have considerable pain in my left wrist if I type for more than a few minutes. I still look at the scars on my right hand when I wake up every morning. I still wonder if my hip will ever stop hurting.

Many of you have politely asked me about the status of this interview with Daryl Palumbo in the past year. I tended to ignore the messages, even though they were all positive and supportive, because I felt ashamed for having not published the story. Something about this interview just felt cursed, like I wasn’t supposed to share it. It’s one of many issues I’ve been working through in the year since the car accident. (Evergreen side note: Go to therapy.)

Ironically, just a few weeks ago, a former superior of mine at a publication I used to work for ran an interview with Palumbo about this very topic. (I’m surprised it took him that long to do so, but to elaborate further would only result in a letter from a lawyer saying I violated an NDA, so we’ll let it be.)

I’m trying to not let the ghosts of my past prevent me anymore from doing what I want to do. So here it is — 10,000 or so words with one of the most enigmatic, brilliant, misunderstood musicians I’ve ever interacted with in any genre of music, originally recorded on July 25, 2019.

Thank you all for your patience and your continued interest in this story. An extra-special thank you goes out to Ben Conoley, who took a considerable amount of time out of his own life to transcribe this interview for me free of charge. And to Daryl Palumbo, I truly appreciate all the time you gave me last year, and I’m so sorry it took me this long to share the story of Swan Damage.

One final note: This thing is long (and was even longer before I chopped out some portions of the conversation unrelated to Swan Damage). Substack keeps warning me that it might get truncated in your email program of choice, so you might want to visit colorsofinsomnia.substack.com to make sure you see the whole thing.

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SCOTT HEISEL: It’s been 10 years since Swan Damage was completed, but it seems like a lifetime ago I imagine given everything that you’ve done in the past decade. Everyone had nothing but positive things to say about the experience, and everyone I talked to said, “Oh my god, the songs sounded so cool, and it was so much fun in the studio, and we were all hanging out, and then just all of a sudden it just kind of ended.” So take me through the actual recording process.

DARYL PALUMBO: Well, I guess I was always just constantly writing in that whole era, definitely from 2002 to I guess when the record was done in 2009/10, somewhere in there. Just constantly writing, and there was a couple phases in there of what Head Automatica was, which was me and what I was doing, just toying with a couple different vibes. And it was just tones of writing, so I was constantly bouncing between a couple of different sort of genres and having them cohesively, potentially make records out of all these songs in my head and there are probably 20-something, 30 songs for the original Head Automatica record and we narrowed it down over time to just whatever it was on Decadence, and then for Popaganda, that was like a 50-song sort of writing process, like definitely I was cranking out a lot of power-pop, more straightforward pub rock. There was a bunch of new wave still in there, but more directly sort of Popaganda era was definitely more beat band, pub rock - Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Nick Lowe and the Rockpile, and using those sort of Stiff Records power-pop stuff and there was just so much of it I was writing at that point. And I guess we narrowed that down, and that became Popaganda. So there’s always just like so many extra ideas just floating around. And so in the background there was some of the ideas always to kind of kick around that became, you know, that became Swan Damage a little bit. 

So yeah, there was just so much extra stuff there was just tons of ideas and extra material and tons of, you know, just, a couple of avenues that I’d always just been trying to do and get right and be satisfied with and a lot of extra material and ideas, and I kind of just went into that after the Popaganda phase of getting ready. I kinda just went into it as “I want to change everything. I want to change the sound.” I wanted to have it be way edgier than maybe Popaganda was, and I guess that was probably around 2007 is maybe when that phase kicked in. Popaganda was out maybe a year, a year-and-a-half, and I was already thinking about moving on to the next record. I mean, I try to remember it all, picture frame it chronologically. Yeah, I guess it was around 2007, maybe late 2007. And I say I went into that with a lot of ideas and a lot of stuff in my head that I wanted to do the six years prior, but I feel at the same time I feel like when I got to that stage I really wanted to shake it up a lot and change the vibe.

We had been playing as a band, as an organic band, definitely with less electronics going on during the Popaganda album and tour, and all the tours for that. There was definitely more of the organic power-pop going on, and way less electronics. And I think that was a product of playing with a couple of band members that I was really close with, and we were spending a lot of time together; practically living together. And when you’re playing with your guys that are a band so much, it kind of steers the direction of the music a lot. There was far less “me” and beats or production-based stuff. And I think that maybe that was when that era was finishing, and I think there was less of playing together as a bunch of guys, as an organic band. And when it was time to start writing stuff, it was less of that and more production heavy stuff. I was doing a lot of production for other people. I was doing more production evidently for myself, too. A lot of electronics, a lot of synth, and a lot of far-out sampling.

I worked with these two dudes, two of the producers who were on the album were named Brothers.  It was a guy named Eric Emm and his brother Josh Topolsky and so those dudes, they were very electronic sort of Brooklyn, New York, new disco stuff, a lot of electro stuff those dudes were doing. And they worked on some stuff with me. There was a lot of electronics going on and that, so I think I’m just babbling at this point, trying to recall it all. But that phase, once the writing kicked in around 2007 and I was really on my journey, it was pretty much me alone going around figuring out how to make this next record happen. And I think even from just telling you the story, I think a lot less playing with a tight-knit group of guys. It was a lot less of that. It was more of me on this, on a pilgrimage, to piece together how to do this sort of next album, this sort of edgier electronic sort of more far-out sort of shit. But there was a lot of those sensibilities. It was all pop. It’s still pop music no matter how you look at it. It was a lot of the stuff that was on the first two records, a lot of the sensibilities still stuck around. 

When you were starting this process, were you being encouraged to go this route by Warners or by your manager John Oakes?

No, of course not. I wasn’t encouraged to go in any direction. It was a pop sort of band, a pop project. I don’t think anybody thought I was going to come back at them with fucking death metal, you know? I think it was pretty apparent to the world that I stayed where I did with that project. From somebody who might just listen to the records, I think that it might sound like one kind of band, one band, one project going through some changes, but you know, I think it’s more for me, I made a conscious decision to have it be a little less band-oriented, have it be more adventurous, a lot more electronics, played with some different sort of people, and I think I got into hiring people for the day or for hours or for a track or whatnot. I got to work with some really amazing and talented people and talented producers. I really wanted to take advantage of that. I knew it was probably the direction, less playing with a group of people that I played with for a few years prior and I think I was just seeing how far I could kinda take what was going on at that point. I had a couple of dream dudes play on the record. There’s some amazing, insane horn work done on it. Bruce Fowler from the Fowler Brothers — he played with Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Hans Zimmer. He’s one of the greatest horn players to ever live. I had horn players that played on old Michael Jackson stuff, Thriller and Off The Wall, all that stuff. It was far out. 

I’m glad you mentioned that because I had two questions I was going to ask you about this. Frank Charlton, the studio assistant, remembered the Michael Jackson horn players because he said they were in the studio the day that Michael Jackson died. 

I can’t believe he said that! Listen, I forgot that until the Michael Jackson shit was all going down recently. So I was sitting with my wife watching this Michael Jackson documentary recently, and I go, “I think I was in the fucking studio the day he died, playing with his horn players that were on that record.” I imagine [Jackson] didn’t keep in touch with all of them for the last 30 fuckin’  years. But I remember, it just hit me, like in everything that I do, in the craziness of everyday life. That’s a far-out thing. He died, I’m sitting there tracking horn parts on a couple of tunes with Jason Lader, Frank Charlton and Jarvis, who plays bass in American Nightmare, who played in Head Automatica. I remember watching that and it just blew my mind that you brought it up. I feel like it only hit me that day watching the documentary, and I haven’t thought about it since then.

But yes, it was the day Michael Jackson died and we were talking before it got announced they were up in their asses. That’s the type of guy I am. I wanted them there because of who they are and what they played on. I’m standing there talking to one of my heroes, Bruce Fowler, who played with integral Zappa stuff that made me who I am. Everything, it’s like the greatest music in the world to me was the shit that he played on. To have him come in and do two long sessions, that’s a long day. And the next day he had to score some film for Hans Zimmer. I remember he had to score the film, and I’m up these guys’ asses trying to get them to tell me stories. And when I get to the Michael Jackson stories, it was before it even got on the news that he had passed away. What a far-out experience, but it was fucking completely ridiculous, and it was probably, in retrospect, there are some days in your life that, I would never refer to myself as a career musician, but I’m just a regular fuckin’ dude who never had a desk job. But if I had to refer to what I do, if I have to think about some of the moments that stick out, that day all together sticks out. It was never because of Michael Jackson per se, but it was because of who I got to have come in and track. Yeah, that was a mega few days worth of sessions for me. I was just tracking every fucking instrument but drums. I think that particular session some of those drums might have been Sammy Siegler.

That was a wild session, and that session was amazing for me personally because I was kind of going into that sort of phase of getting close to finishing Swan Damage and I was really pumped to be doing the more organic-sounding stuff for the album with Jason Lader. I think at that point I had completed a lot of the more far-out, electronic, electro-club stuff that you would hear being played in that era. And I think in this era as well, there is a log of singing and electro going on. But I think I just wrapped a bunch of that stuff with the Brothers and a couple of other people and I flew across the country to try to wrap up some of the Swan Damage stuff, the organic stuff. It was kinda a really amazing string of sessions when I was out there and Michael Jackson passed away. I was dying to get to play some of the really funky, funky, punk funk. Sort of Gang Of Four meets Earth Wind And Fire meets Haircut 100 stuff. And to get to do that in a mega studio with mega engineers, and with a talented dude like Jason Lader, and to get to put it all together and play most of the instrumentation… I was really excited to get to have a couple of session musicians to come in. And then, actually, on those songs as well, possibly on the same day, maybe a different day, Lenny Castro came in. And Lenny Castro was in Toto and played on every big record ever made in L.A. ever, since the fucking ‘70s. He plays percussion on every fucking thing. He’s a legend, and he came in too. And I was really pumped to take this edgy sort of punk funk and really pretty it up in a mega studio. I got to make believe I was in the Clash.

So was that what this was? Was Swan Damage your Sandinista!, you think?

You know what I think really hit me, was that half the album is really adventurous and wild, done in Logic and sort of wild electro and analog synths, and fun stuff and singing big pop stuff over it. I think there was like half an album of that sort of thing, but really edgy, in-your-face kind of early for that stuff that kind of picked up around then. And then the other half, yeah, I guess it’s kinda like Combat Rock, sorta Sandinista! shit, but I think more directly, the organic stuff to me, there were two things that defined it for me. 

One of my heroes is Nick Hayward. He’s the singer-songwriter from the ‘80s band Haircut 100. And in an interview when he was young, maybe when the band started, he was talking about the band and he’s kind of saying what would happen with the band when they put their one record out, and it was like trying to cross the Clash with Earth Wind And Fire. These dudes were really young. They were wearing very lavish, amazing-looking clothing; they were really funky for some of the whitest, British, collegiate, anglo dudes you could imagine. That was really impactful for me, hearing him in this interview, like, “Yeah, there’s this funky thing, and I’m not the funkiest guy, but there’s this funky thing that happens. And some of the guys in the band are really funky. We wanted to kind of marry the Clash and Earth Wind And Fire.” And it really slapped me in the face, that was fucking brilliant. That’s what I had been trying to do, that sort of art student stuff like, you know, Gang Of Four and A Certain Ratio, that sort of edgy punk-funk stuff.

That hit me really hard. My first shows ever in New York and Long Island, being 12 years old or even younger, who knows, the local heroes were a band called Garden Variety. 

Oh, I know Garden Variety. They turned into Radio 4.

There you go, there you fuckin’ go. I can’t even believe you know that. That fucked me up. Now we’re brothers forever. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle. You just blew my mind. I didn’t know if I should tiptoe around different references.

But yeah, Garden Variety was the best. Un-fucking-believable. Indie, jangly, sort of pop-punk, some sexy sensibility. The singer-songwriter, Anthony Roman, he is another hero of mine. And going into that album cycle, one of the questions was “Do you want to write with anyone?” I didn’t want to work with anybody that was a commercial writer. I didn’t want to write with some writing think tank, but I want to help people get their vision out. I said right off the bat, “Well they aren’t the most popular band, and I don’t even know if they are around anymore, but a hero of mine was in Radio 4. His name is Anthony Roman. I don’t even know if he’s around anymore. Maybe he’s free, maybe he’s not playing anymore, I don’t know him terribly well.” He was the man on the street. He was the very sort of the thing to me that always really knocked me outta my socks; he sounded a lot like the edgy early ‘80s pop thing that I keep referencing. He did have that sort of Joe Jackson vibe to me, since the first time I heard him when I just turned 12. Being from Long Island, there’s this mega classic rock. working class, blue collar, commuting to work, radio thing that kind of instilled in everybody on the East Coast. Especially Long Island, New York, Jersey. It’s in your fucking blood in this bizarre way — the Police and Squeeze. These aren’t two bands you just hum the hits to. It’s in you. I heard that in Anthony as a child, and I knew his songwriting sensibilities, his big verses and all the choruses would go to all these dark, Costello-type choruses and he just blew my mind, my whole punk life.

I was really obsessed with how his mind, as he went through the genres into sorta edgy pop, indie rock, he grasped onto every genre, and it still sounded like Anthony. And he nailed every genre, and he also ended up sounding like all of my heroes that are also his heroes. He managed to do it all. He sounded like things, and I like sounding like things rather than being original. That’s like my thing. I like mimicking. That’s my favorite thing in the world. I only want to know how to do it so I know I can do it. I don’t even have to put the record out. That’s how I felt. And I think that’s the big lesson with this whole fucking conversation. I felt that way. I got to the end of that cycle and did feel where I learned so much, it was such a few years, I learned so much; I worked in studios, in production and programming and MIDI mayhem and playing the instruments on all these different versions of songs on this album that somehow ended up coming together, and I felt like I didn’t even hear as much as I should have that it may not have been coming out at the time because I was so finally musically satiated that I felt like I wanted to start anew after it anyway. Like, I was almost blessed it didn’t come out. I learned so goddamn much from being so hands-on for a few years making the fucking album and writing with these people. I felt like I was almost handed a gift in getting to having the luxury of not putting it out, or defaulting to it not coming out. And that sounds odd, but that was part of it. 

It’s almost like you’re going to college. It’s that higher education.

Yeah, and a lot of bands do stuff and they put their record out. The way it works to be in a band is you work really hard on your album, you might take a few years to do it, like I was doing, and to put the record out immediately. I think the only, maybe a gift, or for better or for worse sorta thing is that maybe this just handed me a bit of a luxury to not put out something that I surpassed or grew past. That was that for me, in my life, and I thought maybe it was a fucking gift. I move fast, real fast. I turn on things that I work hard on. 

Anyway, the other thing that blew my mind with Anthony was the simplicity with which he approaches writing. Everything he and I wrote, the lesson I learned was the simplicity of everything. Hearing him put what my cravings were and be, “Oh, this is what you like,” I’ve never had somebody be able to do that, and that definitely telling a hungry writer like me, “This is who you are,” and it was very heavy for me. In being older and so intelligent, he did in a lot of ways tell me, “Hey, this is what you’re trying to do, right?” That was definitely huge. 

It’s exciting to hear you talk about this. It’s also interesting that the way you talk about it, and you talk about it in terms of an album cycle and all these things, it sounds like the album was done. When I was talking with Jason and Frank and Sammy, no one ever seemed to know if the album was ever completed. They knew it was in the mixing phase. Did it ever get to mastering? Was there art? How close to a release date was this album?

It’s funny. When you asked me to do this, I thought to myself, you’re going to ask that question. I knew that was going to come up: Was it done? Is it done? The funny thing is, technically, yes. On paper it was done. It was in the last state. It was not mastered. So we’re pretty much there, short of mastering. I didn’t do any fancy sort of sequencing or segues, or anything to sort of glue it together with the sort of music, sort of tape noise and all these…you know, to go in and create all this, to make the experience. It’s obvious that I did wild garage rock, pop insanity into fucking edgy techno and kind of have them all be a cohesive album, sort of adventure, I dig that. That’s pretty much me, and I think that’s part of Glassjaw, that was always something, it was crucial. Bands like Primal Scream and Blur are constantly managing to glue together these far-out [sounds]. I learned continuity from those bands, and Zappa and Faith No More. With any of those artists, what’s the continuity? The artist is the continuity. But you have to kinda try to put the glue and the scotch tape between the songs and try to make this sort of experience, and I think Primal Scream’s Exterminator is quintessential in that it’s brutal acid house into Detroit techno into garage rock, all run through a distortion pedal. What’s the glue? The glue is the dirt, and this sort of drug-riddled sort of thing. But you’re playing the most diametrically opposed genres you can imagine. And that’s super impactful for me. Huge for me.

So was the record done? Yeah, it was mixed, for the most part. I think the songs I decided would stick around were mixed, and it was all there. It wasn’t glued together. It wasn’t mastered per se. I mean, I could technically master the fucking thing today if I wanted, and it would be “loud enough.” But I mean, yeah, when I was thinking of how to answer the fucking question, I know that I am such a far-out idiot that the real answer is if I had to make it not be done, then..If somebody said something that got up my ass and it wasn’t done, in my head it’s not done. In the end I was willing to say it wasn’t done in the drop of a fucking hat. But was the record done? Yeah.

So at what point did you put the brakes on it?

When it was finishing, it was just really at a time where I think everything was changing, too. I think that it was like, the people I was working with at Warner Bros. were starting to sign trap rappers and Kid Cudi. That was the time, and I think everybody was really trying to jump ship from sort of things that maybe sounded too X, Y, or Z and maybe even just me, having the guy from Glassjaw was maybe a little too close to a bygone era of bands. I don’t know, I feel like they might have perhaps wanted or expected truly big bubblegum sung over L.A. production tunes, and I don’t think that’s me. Granted there was a lot of pop on those first two albums. Those first two records are pop. I think maybe they were imagining pop but like, fucking Britney Spears production. And I think for my third album, that was maybe what my A&R guy at the time was maybe wanting or…

Was that still Craig Aaronson?

That was still Craig Aaronson at the time. I think there was big changes at Warner Bros., and I think people were scrambling to keep with all the big changes that were going on. I don’t know.

You didn’t say it was their decision to shelve the record, though?

The last conversation was kind of “Do you really want us to put the record out?” Like, “Do you have faith in this record?” Not “Do you have faith in the record,” but “Do you have faith in the record in terms of how we at Warner Bros. would want it to be?” And I think that I at this point was like, “No, it would probably be better for me if after all of this work I got to have this record and do what I want to do with it.” But it really wasn’t going to work like that. I wasn’t going to have that record, which cost a lot of money to make. Glassjaw was also getting off of Warner Bros. at that moment. It was sort of, in order for me to move forward ever making music, to get off of that label, that record was almost instantly a casualty. There was no way. I think I probably could have had the record happen on Warner Bros. I am glad it did not, I am so happy that Justin, my partner in Glassjaw and I got off the moment we did. I think them having the record is a fair tradeoff for me and what happened in my life with Glassjaw and other projects after that. 

Like I said, it took a lot of work, a couple of years, a lot of traveling, a lot of living and learning, a lot of working with people in a management position and finally just giving up working with people in those positions. It was very hard to work with people and have them share the vision and kind of be the middleman. It just wasn’t very easy doing it. I learned a lot, for better or worse, I learned a lot in every way as far as being a quote unquote artist, or musician, or producer. I think that was probably the most fruitful time in my life in terms of learning what I learned, bringing my skill-set really to a place where...it’s all I ever wanted. I wanted that more than being onstage. I wanted to learn and be able to mimic and execute and write and record and mic and record and mix and master, and do all of these things which I think at that phase, I was just faced with paying so many sort of modular pieces to get this record done, and learn what I needed to do myself to never have to waste money on things or spend money on things. That was a super learning experience. I was given the luxury to have learned everything I could have possibly wanted to have learned. I took that and moved on in the last decade. And I got to move off of Warner Bros., which was a very hard thing to be on. It was very hard. So imagine having to be stuck working with Warner Bros. in any capacity, be it Head Automatica or Color Film, which was the next band in my life that immediately began. So I mean, to me, it’s worth it. It was all well worth it. That gave me Color Film.

I am trying to clarify the timeline a little bit. You are working on this record through the summer of 2009. You played some shows in January 2010 where you debuted a bunch of new songs. So at that point, did you still think the album was coming out?

We played those songs at a lot of shows. There were a bunch of those shows. A bunch of those songs had gotten played, absolutely. We actually played, there’s some larger New Jersey/New York amazing shows that were in there where we did execute some of that material for a minute. So that definitely was happening, but…

There’s “Too Ashamed,” “Heat,” “Cute Police,” “Chocolate Cake” and “Spitz Ass Spitzer.” That’s still when Jarvis was still in the band, because he left after that. So at that point…

There was probably one show ever without Jarvis, I would say, maybe. 

He didn’t do those U.K. shows, right?

No. The U.K. shows, the only other member that was in it for a while at that point was Jessie Nelson, the keyboard player, who had joined after Decadence. So Jessie played with the band for a good amount of time. He was the only person who I had come back after, when we did those UK shows. Those other two members are Steven Heet and Richard Penzone from Color Film. Well, Richard is my partner in Color Film in spite of what happens. The Head Automatica record is probably in limbo indefinitely, so I guess this is where I’m at in terms of that part of my output. And that’s where I started working with Richard full-time at that point. 

So when you get to those shows in January 2010, at that point, is the album dead? Or do you still think it’s coming out?

I don’t know. I think it was sort of like, “The album’s in limbo, do you really want us to put this album out? Are you a part of this label, are you not?” All these big questions. I’ve been on this label for a bunch of years in my life. I’m getting a little bit older, I have two bands that are sort of by proxy tied to this fucking label. When those conversations began, there’s a chance I didn’t even play Head Automatica shows at that point. So I maybe never played again after that. I could be wrong, that might be…

The U.K. tour was 2012.

The U.K. tour, I don’t even count that.

You don’t?

I mean, I do. That was Head Automatica, absolutely. But that was so far afterward. You seem to remember this tour way better than I do.

I’ve been researching!

You definitely did. No, you’re amazing. But I will say that I think that I put up these partitions in my head because, and I think that explains it in a big way, is that the people involved very much had to do with dictating it with me. I was reading that in books about being a singer-songwriter or artist that I love. It’s always sort of their band, even if the band wasn’t writing it, or orchestrating it, or making the business decisions, your band is your team. And at a younger age you’re spending every minute with them, if not living with them. In some cases, fucking them. I put these partitions up, and I’m trying to get the timeline right to you because so much of it was dictated by who it was who was there for and with me every minute playing it. So like I said, the Popaganda stuff was very much four, five dudes in a room ironing out this sorta singer-songwriter pop tunes that are sort of more traditional pop-rock tunes. And I think that last Head Automatica phase of going to Europe, doing London, doing those shows, I think it was amazing, I think they were amazing renditions. It was the best players that I had ever gotten to play with for Head Automatica. But it was different because two guys who were a part of that weren’t there in the beginning of it. It was just different. When you play with people, the direction changes. I almost am forgetting to associate that with the whole decade prior to that. But you know, it was different, and I gave it a shot and did those shows, and those shows were fucking amazing. I don’t know, we came home and…

It didn’t feel right.

I think the biggest reason it didn’t “feel right” for me was I was working with Richard in that Head Automatica rendition. And him and I were ready 24 hours a day. There was a bunch of Glassjaw sort of stuff that was popping up, and Justin and I had a bunch of EPs and vinyl, limited things that we were doing and playing shows for — these little releases. And aside from that, I was spending every minute thinking about starting this next phase with Richard. And to be doing Head Automatica with him, I don’t mean this in an egotistical way, I felt I was past there. You spend years on something, right? And you really dig it in, you try to cook a fucking steak. And you cook this steak, and you’re like “I’ve got it, I can cook this fucking steak, and I could keep cooking this steak, or I can cook it 100 different ways, and then learn how to cook fish, too.” And as odd, and as poor and lame as an analogy that that is, I was at that point where I was working with Richard, and he is a monster. And he’s a monster, such a fucking monster and a writer and a player, it was like this dream arrangement, and so to kind of dial back and do better and more mature arrangements on Head Automatica stuff and have him be like confined by that, it wasn’t really what I was trying to do. I was really happy with what was going on. But I’ll do it, maybe, sometime.

What’s really fascinating to me about this whole record, more than anything else is that given the almost absurd kind of wealth of leaks for the first two records — there are so many demos and unfinished versions of Decadence and Popaganda tunes out there that have been floating around forever — that to my knowledge, nothing from Swan Damage, studio-wise, has ever hit the internet. 

You want to know why? It’s completely obvious why. Because fucking record labels, the larger they are, the worse they are, and the larger they are, the more links in the chain there are. So what do you think happens? When you’re in the face of a fucking major label, Decadance is about to be finished. Dan The Automator is a part of it, he just did the Gorillaz record. Glassjaw’s second record did really well, we just played our biggest headlining shows on certain tours. When it lines up, and the label is in your face and you have to hand them this fucking completed record. Everything leaks about the record. Demos leak, incomplete tunes leak. The release date leaks. Everybody at the label is telling everybody they ever worked with. They’re whispering about it, they’re talking about it. There’s no secrecy, there’s no decorum, and you’re going to get fucked and it’s going to leak. 

The reason I always thought Swan Damage managed to never fucking leak is because there was no label by the time it was done. It never got to circulate — all these young fools circulating the CDs and demos. The CD roughs or the demos that were done that day. That’s like a very, older, sort of thing where every B-side was getting leaked in 2002. How the fuck do you even get those? Because some fucking idiot with a fucking CD-R or CD burner at the fucking label, who is fucking 20 is burning it. That’s the reality of it, of course.

The funny thing is, when have you ever seen a watermarked CD, when have you ever seen a record leak, and the intern gets held accountable? It never happens. It’s not real, it will never happen. If you’re the label, it’s going to fucking leak. If you’re Marvel, where Marvel shows up at Comicon and announces a bunch of shit, and everyone is like “you’ve been fucking working on this for a year and you just announced it? How did it not leak?” No, it’s a bunch of fucking goons sending each other MP3s off scratched fucking CDs in 2003. 

I remember looking through a bin of 50-cent CDs at Academy in Brooklyn one time and I found unopened watermarked advance copies from Warner for a Story Of The Year album or something, but it had [Warner publicist] Jim Baltutis’ name on it. And I was like, “This is hilarious.” 

Nobody cared. 

It was a weird time in the industry.

That’s right, and you know, things don’t leak anymore because a lot of people are making these on their laptops in Pro Tools, Ableton and Logic, and you’re controlling it. There’s a lot of from my hand to your hand. And that was Swan Damage. I think that was really wise and it didn’t leak. And I think it’s great that it didn’t leak because, like I said, I’m not trying to downplay any of my hard work, I worked my fucking ass off for years, and it sounds like it when you hear it. But, hey, you know, maybe it’s a fucking blessing that it didn’t leak. I am glad it didn’t leak I guess. And in a lot of ways I am glad it didn’t come out. 

That leads me to my final two questions: Will the record ever come out, and will Head Automatica ever play a show again? I asked those questions of Sammy Siegler, and he said, “I hope it comes out. I can tell you that of all the tracks we recorded there can be a solid 10-song release. I still stay in touch with all those guys, so a new recording and new shows would be dope. Let’s do it.”

Well you know, obviously Sammy is not just a drummer. He’s very special. So, since I met Sammy I have gone to see Sammy play in a hundred bands since before I had hair on my body. Sammy was a very high level player in this. He was a beautiful motherfucker. He’s a great drummer. He’s a wonderful dude. And having him return into my life to join Head Automatica was an amazing thing in and of itself as well. So to even have him say such nice things is huge, and I adore that dude. And he breathes as a drummer. On a project where someone is hiring dudes and you’re hiring motherfuckers, not everybody is like Steely Dan’s agent who have ten different musicians and no two songs have the same hands on them. Every song sounds like the same band and is completely impactful and changes the world. That never happens. So to have Sammy come in and play a lot of that shit was like, just an energy breathed so much life into the music. Him getting to finally play a lot of that radio Clash sort of dope disco with a lot of really powerful garagey, Iggy And The Stooges moments too. I think he really did great, he was fucking great, and you  know, I love playing with him and I love him.

So to get back to the questions: Is the record ever going to come out, and will Head Automatica ever play a show again?

Will the record ever come out? Do I think it will ever come out? No, I don’t. I don’t even have a goal about that. I can’t even get a fucking phone call through to people [at Warners]. You know, I’m just me. I’m nobody. And even when I was on the label it was hard enough to get answers. I’m not fucking Liam and Noel, I’m not Prince, I’m not fucking Annie Lennox. I am not one of these characters whose powerhouse managers know all of these A&R guys. I’m not that guy anymore. I’m not in that sort of scene. I wouldn’t even know how to get the legal opinion of like, this is how you could maybe get the record. Like, if I wanted to buy it right now — and I don’t want to — however much money it must have cost to make, I wouldn’t even know how to buy it. I can hardly find out what Justin and I are in “debt” to Warner Bros. for. We’re not in debt for anything, it’s just some red tape bullshit. But we pay lawyers to find out, and they couldn’t even find out. I’m not Lil Wayne, I’m not Drake, it’s just not going to happen. So do I think it’ll ever come out? I don’t even know how to fucking begin the process of potentially getting it. It is what it is.

But do I think there will ever be another Head Automatica show? I don’t see why not. I do get offers. I just feel like it’s a lot of work, and I am older, and I only like doing things if I am going to end up making money. I only make a move if I am going to make money. I have a family, I have a child, I have a fucking mortgage. 

Congratulations, and I feel that incredibly. At this point, when you get to your mid-30s or your 40s, it’s okay to make money doing something that you’re good at. 

Of course. I don’t even dig money, I don’t like it. But it’s the reality of it. I know as a guy who sometimes puts on the band leader hat, I know that I would have to hustle, and it would be a lot of work and a lot of finding the right parts. Rehearsing, getting it all. Dude, I don’t know if I have time to make the right lineup. I mean, light show, let alone rehearsing five, six, seven guys, trying to get it together. It’s worth it, I’m just being lazy.

Here’s the worst part. The real irony of all of it. is you did that Color Film record, and it finally came out through Epitaph, and Epitaph runs through ADA, which is owned by Warners. 

I love that you even know that. Can you believe that? They’re still making money. Not a lot, because I am sure the record didn’t sell tons. 

I bought a copy!

Thank you. Well then, you hear the link. You hear it. You hear how it all kind of went there. You hear how that might have been. 

Based on the songs that did get out there, the live versions, you hear where Color Film went to, Swan Damage could have easily been the bridging of the gap between those two things. 

It was, it definitely was. It was a lot of just sounds that came into. I change a lot. And whenever somebody asks, “You’re doing this chameleon, running and hiding from one genre to another, ducking and hiding, what’s that like?” The analogy I always give is you can’t hear what’s going to tickle you five minutes into the future. And I feel like once you can wrap your head around that, you can soak in everything you need to be growing. And I think that was it. That was the phase. Learning all these things could not have gotten from Popaganda to just having discovered electronics, all these recording techniques on all these records I love in the ‘80s. You know, there’s no way you can just do it. The mood changes one day. Who knows, you smoke a joint and there’s a record that blows your head in a way that it never did. And the way I always explain it is, if there’s a bass tone, and a lot of times in things I’m involved in, a bass tone will define an entire era of a band or a project. 

I was literally last night listening to the isolated bass track of “London Calling” and I’m like, “Goddamn.”

That was the craziest. There’s nothing crazier than that. Like fucking Queen, too: If I even hear just the backup vocals from “Bohemian Rhapsody” and be like, it’s a lifetime of soaking in the secrets of the universe in those tracks. I just feel like you can’t hear it and then you can hear it. One day I couldn’t hear a fretless bass with a lot of chorus on it, played a certain way. And then the next day I am playing something else and I hear it everywhere and it makes sense. You can’t force that. It was explained to me by somebody like this: Every day you open this spice cabinet and you see hundreds of spices, and every single day you see the same shit and you don’t even recognize it. One day somebody goes “Where’s the oregano?” and you’re like “I don’t know,” and then you look and the oregano is right in front of you. You saw that spice every day and you never thought about it. And then one day it’s there and you’re never not going to think about that oregano ever again. One day it’s there and one day it jumps out of this fucking pile and blows your mind. 

That’s very true. In the last few years my day job has been teaching music at School Of Rock. I’m a drummer and a singer. That’s my thing. But I’ve been getting way into bass working there because I love the sound of it. I am at the point where I’m like, “Oh those are flats, those are rounds.” I can hear what type of string is being used, and it blows my mind. 

And when you record something you know what you’re going to say in your head? After everybody is finished the tracking. You’re going to go, “You know what, I think I want flat-wound. I want that sound.” And then imagine the day before you heard that. It’s something that happens slowly in the background, but in reality, we realize change is black and white. Until that hit you, you never thought that. And then one day you got obsessed with the nuance of a flat-wound in a song. When I was younger, before Head Automatica, before really trying to branch out and professionally record rap and trip-hop and make all these things. There used to be Glassjaw in my sound spectrum. I was raised on tons of shit, art and music and magazines and films. But the only thing I was into as a baby was fucking Glassjaw. Everything sounded like Glassjaw. If I was going to make songs and I was going to do a Squeeze cover, somehow it was going to sound like that grinding, heavy sort of bass, and the guitars were going to sound dirtier. It was everything. And eventually, one day, it wasn’t correct anymore to play a Squeeze cover or a Beatles tune. One day you just open your fucking ears and everything clicks. And that’s the most elementary level. One day there was only this, next day there was black and white, not just white. And that one, I had those moments, this really profound, from mic’ing techniques to deadening a fucking snare drum, to really fucking program-heavy mayhem IDM craziness, Aphex Twin insanity, time-change percussion, avant garde electro. One day it didn’t exist, the next day it existed — and every day those sort of things were happening.

I can’t get across that this was the most fertile fucking musical period up until that point in my life. And just trying, the enthusiasm with which I am saying it, I hope you do realize that to me, I would never choose having a record come out, produced by a bunch of dudes, and I’m singing this jingly dick shit, I would never choose that over what I am telling you. I am telling you, that day Michael Jackson died, I will remember that day on my death bed, dude. And it’s not because of Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson has a little bit to do with that day, and it’s not because he passed away. It’s because the horn players, I played with them. I fucking love the horn players. I charted horn parts, I instructed these dudes. And the best parts was it was one of those times I paid for it, I envisioned it, I formulated the sentence. I spit the sentence out. It had a period at the end of it. I paid them, they worked the whole day. They told me they were impressed and “we were pushed to the limit today.” Jerry Hey, who played on [Thriller], said, “These aren’t normal songs you know. You gotta give us a second to get that run.” It was a big run, a big fucking Clash meets Earth Wind And Fire. And he looks at me and says, “You gotta give us a second. We’re old guys, and this isn’t a regular song.” Which, what they meant was, “Go fuck around, you moron. You’re not writing standards here, so relax with your fucking goon shit.” But it also reassured me because it, they were right, it’s not. And these dudes, that’s a fucking prodigal demigod telling me that. He could paint the Sistine Chapel with the gifts that come out of the shit he plays. For him to say, “These aren’t blues progressions, these aren’t 1-3-5 progressions, these are far-out shit.” Getting to play with that dude, getting him to play atonal shit. Getting to play like he was in XTC or playing atonal far out shit, like he was in Nation Of Ulysses. Dude, to get that to happen was like, “I did it.” I’ve never done this. I’ve never been able to write, and really write far out, but also have dudes that in five minutes are able to play these orchestrations, play the harmonies, track five-fucking-part horn parts live. These guys are animals. They are 70 years old. They’re into the fucking tunes. They’re talking to me about these wet dream albums they were on. It was everything. Just for that day alone I would give up Swan Damage, 

I assume you have a copy of the record somewhere on a hard drive. 

Yes, but you know what I am going to say? You deserve a copy of the record. But I will say this, I don’t think I have the songs as instrumentals. And I will say the thing I was least happy about with the album on a lot of it was me. And so in my own mind, where it comes up and plays on my laptop or something, I’ll say, “I wish there were instrumentals,” because at the very least, for me to be able to master these tunes, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the mastering process, but if you have a grip on the mastering process, mastering is, mixing and mastering can take your art to any place. You can go from sounding like you are a Phish cover band at your local fucking Wednesday wing night bar and like the goons are playing in these bad clothes and playing Phish covers, and the sound of Phish is like a clean Fender through an amp with nothing on it, the most whitest shit. But you send me tracks from that band on Wednesday wing night, and let me mix and master that, and I will take it to a place where you might not believe they were as close as they were. I wish I had these tunes as throwaways without my vocals. And I thought I did. I have some separate stems. I don’t have every track. You know, some movies don’t get a movie with a good version that comes out. Sometimes you get a version of some shit movie and it’s because it’s gone with the wind. And I don’t mean Gone With The Wind. 

When I was asking Jason Lader about it, he said, “I know I have stuff on a hard drive somewhere.”

He texted me last night. He goes, “Dude, I’d really like to listen to it.” I’m out getting sushi with my wife and baby and I’m like, “I guess I got stuff.” I am a guy that every day as the session ended, I have all the songs and changes from that day, or just jamming for two hours. Two hours of jamming. I was that moronic. I got rid of that stuff in my life. I try to care less as I have gotten older. That was a decade ago. I have got so much shit. That said, a lot of the demos are peppered with bad vocals. I do have it. It’s not mastered. I can get it to go into a place that’s bigger and better, I think. You know, I wish I had just the more organic songs — the half [of the album] written that was more organic with no vocals. If I had that, I could turn those instrumentals into something, I would maybe re-track some of those vocals. But it’s a different time and I don’t like going back.

I really appreciate your willingness to talk about this. I realize it’s a totally different time in your life.

I want to let you know, I’ve said no to every single interview. I have never done a Head Automatica interview [about Swan Damage before]. I never enjoy things like this. So when you wrote me up, I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about the past. I don’t care about anything.” I’m very into the here and now. I live in Miami with my wife and my child. I am in a very different place than when I was trying to make any records all the time. And when I read that email I was like “Man, I don’t want to revisit these times.” But as soon as you ended up knowing as much as you do about everything, that made it so much better. You’re the best.

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Today’s subject line is a lyric from the song “Head Automatica Soundsystem” by Head Automatica. Listen to the song below, and if you dig it, you can buy the record it’s from on Amazon (and by clicking that link, there’s a chance I may make a few cents):

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