Interview with Scott Krauss of 'Pere Ubu' and 'Home and Garden' 2002

Way back in 2002-2003 I was acting web master for recordrevolution.com and I heard four newly recorded Garage Trance tracks from Cleveland's Home And Garden collaboration. The albums pending title was to be something like Future Sun Worship and it was still (at the time) officially UN-finished and mostly unheard. After hearing some of the songs, which I REALLY liked allot, I asked for an interview with Scott Krauss, the drummer, producer, and chief architect of the project. Scott has a lengthy history of involvement in Cleveland rock and is formerly the drummer for Cleveland's legendary and provocative Pere Ubu he also happened to be working full time at Record Revolution, so it wasn't to tough for us to arrange to sit down over a few beers and talk about Home and Garden, and Pere Ubu. Scott is currently the manager out at My Generation in Westlake, 25947 Detroit Rd Cleveland, OH 44145 and can be contacted out there by phone: Main Phone: 440-871-5586 and or Fax: 440-871-3120 And although I am happy to post and share this interview (with Scott's recent email of re-permission of course) and the MP3 file I am sorry to report that My Generation are closing their doors and going out of business at the end of this month. So enjoy this brief interview, listen to the MP3 (and turn it way UP for maximum effect), and get out to My Generation before it closes once and for all!

Many of the players on this project album are some of the same people that Scott has played with for years, a supremely talented roster of musicians including:

Diane Duncan: Vocals - Clarinet - Piano on "Pale Criminal"
Tony Maimone: Bass Guitar - EML Synthesizer
Michelle Temple: Bass Guitar - Guitar - Piano - Wood Flute on "Space Doll"
Melanie Fioritto: Guitar
Warren Levert: Bongos - Congas - Percussion
Angel Mendoza: Sampler
John Schumann: Guitars on "Delores"

So, what is Garage Trance and who are the players featured on Future Sun Worship?
The Web Master (WM) dude tries to find out....

WM: Who is Diane Duncan when she is not working in the studio with Home And Garden? (Diane responded to these questions via email.)

DD: I teach Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin.

WM: Are you working on any other projects, or are you in any other bands right now?

DD: I am writing with Michele Temple who is living in NYC.

WM: When or why did Diane Duncan choose to sing on these songs?

SK: It's kind of a long story.... (Making it short) there were some shows we were at together and she had heard the tracks without vocals. She basically said, "I want to do that!".

WM: Where did you meet Diane?

SK: She was in a band called the Vivian's.

WM: How were you involved with the Vivian's?

SK: After I left Pere Ubu for a hiatus in 1981, I had a handful of ideas and I wanted to head into the studio and start a project. Somebody told me that there was a bass player I should check out, namely Michelle Temple. When Home and Garden got started doing gigs, Michelle was playing bass and doing guitar stuff. Her friend was Diane, and they were putting a band together called The Vivian's. So over the course of five years or so, Michelle would be playing in Pere Ubu, The Vivian's, and Home And Garden. Home and Garden often played shows with The Vivian's. At the time, Diane was singing with The Vivian's. There was a certain time when The Vivian's weren't really doing much, and Diane knew I was going into the studio. She also knew we didn't have a singer for the music, and she was interested.

WM: So was the music already completed by the time Diane heard the tracks?

SK: No, the music was not completed, but most of the rough ideas were down when she heard them. Ive got a little microstudio at home, and I make a demo cassette and give the tape too the people who I think will be interested in doing something with the music. But those original tracks actually started life out at Suma, which is where Pere Ubu records. The original tracks I was going to use for Pere Ubu projects, but they were rejected at the time, so I asked Michelle if she wanted to play bass guitar and guitar and she said yes. At the same time, Diane punched me in the chest and said she wanted to do the vocals.

WM: So Diane was involved right from the beginning of the project?

SK: To give her credit, yes, she was involved right from the beginning of the project.

WM: The poetry, or lyric content, is mixed forward and center. Loud, clear vocals. I love the poetry. Does Diane improvise the lyric content on these tracks?

SK: I don't know how much of it is improvised; you would have to check with her on that question.
(Diane responded to the same question via email. Thanks Diane!)
DD: With Home and Garden I do some improvisation -- I would sometimes bring books of poetry and just open to any page and sing off of what I had written. But I usually brought some structured ideas to the studio, having listened to Scott's work -- I like to allow for a great deal of freedom in voice melody and content. I sometimes just experiment and try my 'luck'.

WM: Popular production music seems to be tailored to the tastes of an increasingly finicky audience, but these tracks don't fit into an easily defined mold, do they?

SK: When I read articles in the big music production or recording magazines, I see these articles and interviews with producers and other music big wigs and they all say the same thing: the biggest challenge is to get your own sound, and believe in what your doing, don't try to copy anything else. And then what I see happening is that the band gets signed, the record company gets involved, and then they want a "cosmopolitan" sound. The people in the record industry say, "be yourself, be yourself", and then as soon as a band gets signed they start nagging, "I don't hear a single there, I don't hear a single."

WM: And by single, do you mean anything that a record company can sell to the radio audience?

SK: Yes. Whatever sells a lot of units that will make the record company money, that's what the record companies want.

WM: And what is it that consummates the listeners' attention with what's on the radio?

SK: I don't really know because I don't listen to the radio anymore.

WM: You don't listen to the radio? There must be something you like...

SK: WCLV the classical station...

WM: How would you describe the sound of these new tracks, if you were forced to categorize them?

SK: I hate to categorize the sound of the music. I think its much more important and effective if the listener tries to do that. If I say "oh, it's jazz" then there are going to be people who say, "what an asshole, he's got a really big ego" and if I say it's rock, other people will say, "yeah, whatever...not" I really hate to analyze what it is were doing. I like doing it, I like going in the studio, there is an obvious direction or statement, um, anything beyond that I can't really talk about. I can't critique it, I can't analyze it, you know. What I am doing now is also what I was doing in Pere Ubu. I did not wake up one morning and say to myself, " I am now a reformed Anarchist. I am now an overheated ballistic missile. I will now be a millionaire." No. It's not like that. What I took with me into Pere Ubu are the same artistic concepts that I took with me when I left. The continuity is all there.

WM: I feel compelled to try and categorize the music in order to more fully communicate an idea to someone not familiar with the history of the band, or the progression of the music. It helps the listener to say, well, it's this or it's that, I mean the tendency to categorize is, like, overpowering...

SK: You have to do that to a certain degree, of course. You get into that territory of, "It's like a Ford, only better."

WM: So I guess there comes, inevitably, a point of extremity. An advertising tag line situation, or a label that has to be used, or invented. So if you had to use a label to describe this music, what would you use?

SK: A tagline...well, I have joked with some friends of mine that what I am doing right now is called Garage Trance.

WM: Garage trance, wow, that's great, I like it!

SK: That's not really what Home And Garden is, but everyone is like, "Yeah yeah that's it! It's Garage Trance!". So, there you go then, it's a tag line...

WM: The music doesn't sound like it was recorded in a garage at all. It sounds very professionally engineered and produced, played with precision and grace. So why use the word garage? What if we just left the word garage out and called the music trance music?

SK: Oh god no no no. Trance is electronic ambient stuff. Most purists would say something like, "He's an asshole, and it's rock and roll"

WM: So it's rock and roll because it has guitar and drums in it?

SK: Oh yeah.

WM: And it's garage because...

SK: Well, all rock and roll bands start off either in a garage, or a basement, or a loft somewhere. Initially, the guitar player, the base player and myself started rehearsing in a garage. And, the whole concept of Pere Ubu in the beginning was something like Avant Garage.

WM: Avant Garage?

SK: When Eric Feldman and I (the keyboardist for PJ Harvey) were working together in Pere Ubu, we got into this heated discussion once about the direction of the band and I said, "Pere Ubu will never be a big deal, because Pere Ubu is a garage band". Well, he got a little ticked off, and that was the end of that conversation.

WM: Will you tell me what was the motivation for this project?

SK: It was something that I wanted to do for myself, selfish motivation.

WM: Is Home And Garden planning on playing out live sometime?

SK: Only if there is a financial parachute.

WM: You mean someone to underwrite the expenses?

SK: Yeah. The people involved in this project live in various parts of the USA, and while everyone involved in the project has Cleveland roots, it would be tough to convince everyone to go out and give up the day gig in order to come out and do Home And Garden.

WM: What about doing one or two high profile gigs in order to promote the recording project?

SK: Oh yeah, great idea. As long as the motivation to do the live show is there. We wouldn't do a live show just to prove we could do a live show, I would rather we spend that same effort going back into the studio. The recorded work lasts forever, while the live experience fades in the audience mind.

WM: Do you plan on releasing these recordings?

SK: Oh absolutely. There is some interest right now.

WM: How many albums do Home And Garden have out?

SK: We have done a bunch of recordings...they are out there to be had...

WM: How long ago were the last recordings of Home And Garden released?

SK: Oh, ten years ago, maybe even fifteen years.

WM: Where did you record these tracks?

SK: Most of them were done out at Suma in Painesville, some were done down 46th and Saint Claire.

WM: Tell me something about some of the players who contributed their time to the effort?

SK: Well, let's see, Tony Maimone he's from the " Modern Dance" era of Pere Ubu, Michelle is playing in Pere Ubu right now. We did the recording out at Suma, which is where Pere Ubu has done most of its recordings. Paul was the engineer on that stuff, and so he was with Home And Garden.

WM: And what of Diane Duncan and her unique vocal styling?

SK: You know, I really appreciate her vision, even though I don't always agree with it completely.

WM: So listeners are going to find some elements of Pere Ubu in Home And Garden?

SK: Yeah. Again, it's a continuum you know? This work I did before Pere Ubu is what I took into Pere Ubu and what I am doing now is an exploration of the same artistic vision.

WM: What are the chances in percentage that Home And Garden will present a live show in, say, the next 12 months?

SK: Well, there is a realistic percentage and then there is an optimistic percentage. The realistic percentage might be on the order of, say, 20% where the optimistic might be 80% chance for a live show. There are just so many economic concerns to getting everybody together; they would all have to be addressed. There are a number of people in town who keep asking me over and over and over again about a live show.

WM: So, how many tracks are you holding onto?

SK: There are a total of 15 tracks. You have four of them.

WM: I hope to hear the others soon.........