>>PREVIEW
THE LONG WINTERS
Saturday, March 17
The Warehouse
It’s not easy being a great songwriter. First of all, it’s a totally subjective thing. One person’s poetry is another’s problem. Even if you can find a way to gracefully interlock lyric and melody, there’s always the chance it will fall through the cracks. According to John Roderick, front man for Seattle’s The Long Winters, that is what happened with the band’s latest album, 2006’s brilliant Putting the Days to Bed.
"It’s a weird record," says Roderick. According to him, initial response to the album has been muted, but many listeners have found that the more they listen to Putting the Days to Bed, the more there is to find.
"I hear from so many people… ‘this record really came alive to me so much more when I was least expecting it to,’" he says. "I’m really gratified to hear it. The only sad part is that most people out there don’t revisit a record that way."
That’s not to say that Putting the Days to Bed is free of instant pop hits. The songs "Teaspoon" and "Pushover" prove that Roderick is a master of the one-word chorus. Album standout "The Sky is Open," combines nimble wordplay, bass grooves and an airborne refrain in a way that would make other songwriters green with envy. The fact that the album continues to grow for the listener months after the first spin is as astounding as it is wonderful.
"It’s both great to make something like that, that is more lasting, but it is also a little sad that in this day and age if it doesn’t grab you in the first 30 seconds, most people don’t ever listen to it again," says Roderick.
IT TAKES TIME
The fact that Putting the Days to Bed is such an unassuming classic is fitting. Much like the album, Roderick, too, has taken his time getting where he is. Putting the Days to Bed is his third album with The Long Winters. Despite having an interest in music since his teen years growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, Roderick didn’t form this band until he was in his 30s.
Music fans in the Pacific Northwest probably remember Roderick’s first brush with the music limelight. Back in 1998, he wowed critics as part of the Western State Hurricanes. At the time, they were the next big thing in Seattle, a city famous for knowing all about the next big thing. By their third show they were approached by Sub Pop label head Jonathan Poneman to join the roster. It’s reported that Roderick offended Poneman during the negotiations and as a result, the deal fell apart. Not long after, The Western State Hurricanes followed suit.
Roderick was pulled out of the depression that followed by his friend Sean Nelson, a member of one-hit-wonders Harvey Danger. Nelson enlisted Roderick on keyboards and he stayed with the band until 2000. By that time, Roderick was ready to get back in the saddle. He recorded The Long Winters’s debut The Worst You Could Do is Harm, as a studio experiment with Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla. Then he turned the tables and asked Nelson (among others) to join his band. Two critically acclaimed full-lengths later, Roderick is hitting his stride. He may not have any greater insight into the songwriting craft, but you can’t argue with the results.
"I wish I could say that I had a process that involved a lot of active deciding. Every time I finish a song I feel lucky that the song came out as it did," says Roderick. "I spend a lot of time crafting the lyrics so that I really feel that there is no dead weight there. The music writing is very instinctual. I’m just letting my hands do the work." That approach worked so well for Roderick as a songwriter that he and the rest of the band used the same technique when they recorded Putting the Days to Bed.
"Let’s go in, make the record like we’d play the songs live and not indulge our more orchestral impulses. Not indulge as many of our flights of fancy, but keep it kind of rough and dirty and see what happens," says Roderick. "It’s kind of an experimental attitude about our own process…. Just allowing whatever seems to be taking flower to just take flower – to not censor a song because it’s a little too funky."
PUTTING THE PAST TO BED
The music of The Long Winters bubbles with youthful exuberance, but these days Roderick is showing maturity not only in his songwriting but also in other aspects of his life. After years of watching others at the boards, he’s the sole producer of Putting the Days to Bed and he’s taken a firm hand in every aspect of The Long Winters’s business model. Roderick says it was a long time coming.
A regular drinker in his teens, much of the press that accompanies The Long Winters talks about Roderick’s dark times, which include onstage tantrums, flunking out of college and homelessness. Ironically, it was at the age that most men start trying to regain their lost youth that Roderick started growing up.
"I was actively self-destructive until I was about 30 years old. Then I realized at a certain point that I guess I had made it. There were so many times where I should have bit the bullet between 15 and 25. I sort of came around, one day at 30 years old, like, wow, I made it. That’s amazing. I never expected to."
In many ways, Roderick’s realization mirrors his latest album. If you’ll forgive a metaphor far less elegant than those that appear in Roderick’s lyrics, it may take a while for some people to realize the payoff, but it is unquestionably worth it.
"I put some of those knives away in the drawer and have spent the last couple of years trying to figure out a way to channel that impulse to destroy… into something else," he says. "That impulse is still in me. I just don’t consider it. I think the problem was I used to think that was the most honest way to live and I don’t believe that is true anymore." |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.