The Periodic Label

FINIAN MCKEAN: THE TPL INTERVIEW!!

TPL:
So you moved from Red Hook, Brooklyn to study up in Boston.  What is the nature of your studies up there and how do they relate to your music and vice versa?  Do they operate in some sort of artistic grand scheme?

Finian McKean:
I’m going for my PhD in Sanskrit at Harvard. Left Brooklyn kinda reluctantly to come up here where the main export is brains...haha! Sanskrit is the Indo-European language of ancient India and Hinduism; karma is a Sanskrit word--so is OM. My interest is in the older stuff, Vedic Sanskrit, which is from around 1500 B.C, and comes down to us in an unbroken oral tradition of poetry, songs and ritual. There are still people around who say it, sing it and do it! So on one level it’s just a thrill to travel back 4000 years in time and culture...The more I play rock n roll and jam and learn songs, the more I understand that I’m participating in the same kind of oral tradition: someone learned a song from his brother who learned another from his mom who learned a similar one from his uncle and so on. I mean, I learned to play guitar from my uncle Peter Gerety, my dad’s brother. He taught me Mississippi John Hurt and Elvis and a bunch of other tricks. So the grand project for me is this human connection across time, and it’s bigger than me or any one person. We get so hung up on the idea of one great person creating from scratch. I wanted to turn my back on that and learn something that transcends the personalities you read about in Spin or Pitchfork or Creem or the Encyclopedia Britannica. For me, Veda is prehistoric rock n roll.

TPL:
Your new album, “Monsters of the Deep Woods” was recorded in Red Hook, mostly in wintertime.  How did the Red Hook “landscape” seep into the recording process?  What role does place play in your creations?

Finian McKean:
Oh man I miss Red Hook. Especially now that the Spring is here and everyone’s hanging out down at the water. The landscape is in the music for sure--where else in NYC could you cut a track at top volume at 2 am with the back door open to let in some fresh air? Lucky for us we cut it when we did, because in the last year there’s been a condo boom and the new neighbors are not having it!!!!  If you listen close there will be the occasional truck or dog barking, too...When I think of those sessions, I mainly think of being on the first floor of my house, communicating via mirror reflection with Patrick Brennan who’s nestled in a big blue corner with his drum set. The floors are gold, the ceilings are high, the street lights are shining in the window.

TPL:
Your describe the album as “a record of one singer’s shamanizing. In studios, in bars, under the stars, alone at home...” There is an unmistakable shamanic quality about the way you perform-- are you able to describe your approach to performing or the ways in which you access the shamanic space?

Finian McKean:
For me this is all about letting go. I write the song, teach the song, jam the song, record the song, mix the song and then in the performance I have to forget the song. That’s the only way to get to that space where you can feel more than your own personal emotions--if the vibe is right, some people in the audience will be there with you. I’m always paraphrasing David Briggs, who said something like: if you think, you stink. I love that because it’s a reminder to disengage your conscious-worrying-am-i-in-tune?-do-people-like-this?-brain and let some other deeper mind take control. I’ve also learned a lot from jamming with friends, both people who can “play an instrument” and people who “can’t.” If you learn to make a song in a group with no plan and no discussion, you’re halfway there.

TPL:
I’m always interested in how artists deal with the discomfort or “divine discontent” that can happen in the creative process, and in describing this album you talk about having to hit wrong notes and give up caring about the perfect take.  In fact, you admittedly went searching for the monsters.  Did you and do you experience this discomfort?  What do you think it really is, perhaps from a shaman’s perspective?  Do you see it as a friend, enemy, neither, both? 

Finian McKean:
That’s a good question. Looking back, it all seems so positive; that is to say, I THINK I enjoyed it. But if I really think hard, it was a battle. Patrick and I had to play our way into a state of unconsciousness--we jammed so many nights in a row, up till all hours, until we finally got to a place where we didn’t give a shit and we were feeling it. Of course, the usual intoxicants are always helpful...So we’d get there and put it all on tape and then, back to square one the next night. The discomfort comes in between and at the beginning: Can I get it up? can I get there again? can i find that place? Over the weeks, we learned some tricks; the most useful is the most obvious: just roll with it.

TPL:
How do you balance fatherhood and family with your art?  Is it a challenge to integrate everything or do they perhaps inspire each other?

Finian McKean:
Well, I really tested the limits during those “Monsters” sessions because my wife Amy and our new daughter Addie were “sleeping” upstairs the whole time. I don’t know how they did it. I guess Addie has never known anything different. She’s a jammer and loves to rock out. The coolest song we wrote together came shortly after moving up here and having a fire in our new place. She woke us up at 6 am to smoke billowing out of the bathroom. The plumber had dropped a burning ember of sotter in the wall the day before. We got out OK and the next night in the hotel we sang together: “Fire, fire/why’d you burn my house/ Why-o, why-o/ Addie doesn’t like it, says it smells like cigarettes...” I play that in my set now all the time....And all the hundreds of records that everyone thinks must be mine when they come over are actually my wife’s--she’s a real music lover and has turned me on to nearly every band/tune/album I really dig. She goes for quality...What I’m saying is--both the girls know instinctively what I’ve had to work so hard to understand about music and life. They get it....And I shouldn’t leave out our chihuahua Lucia, who howls everytime we play “Motion PIctures” by Neil Young; sometimes our pitbull Lala gets in the act too.

TPL:
Lastly, who inspires you?  What music have you been listening to lately or would you recommend?

Finian McKean:
Amy just brought home a bitchin compilation from Summer Records/Light in the Attic: all ex-pat Jamiacans getting down in ‘70s Canada. Also Wynonie “Mr Blues” Harris, an LA blues-singer with a young Mingus on bass! I’m loving everything by the Yardbirds these days. For anybody interested in Veda, check out “The Four Vedas” on Smithsonian/Folkways; you’ll get a taste of what I love about it. And oh, yeah--there’s this great open source record label where the music is free and the bands are top-notch…

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