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Pigeonholed as Power Pop
LP: How do you feel about or do you think about genre at all? The cliché is that it’s power pop and seems to cast such a large net. Do you think about that as a lineage, or is it just, “This is the sound I make when I turn my instruments on?”
Paul Chastain: I think it’s more the latter. I never really loved it—I don’t mind it so much now—but I remember being in Velvet Crush and starting to get the sort of power pop tag. I never thought of us as being that, although I admit a lot of our influences are bands you would consider that kind of thing. But that’s not the limit of our influences.
I never like that sort of pigeonholing. It’s so limiting. But we have country rock songs, freak-out songs, and all kinds of songs, and I just never felt like we were like Badfinger or the Raspberries or something.
I love those bands and wanted to have elements of those bands, but we were just as focused on being like the Kinks, being like the Flying Burrito Brothers at times, or being like whoever. Now, I understand a little more that tag is a convenience so people can understand your basic thing. But I sort of resented it unnecessarily and always wanted to do my thing and not label it. It wasn’t my job to call it anything.
LP: It’s interesting how something that sort of starts as a way to have a discussion, to give something some context, or to figure out where to file it in the record store takes on a life of its own. But it’s also fascinating what a big tent it ultimately ended up being, especially with the musicians that emerged in what I would call the post-indie era after the mid-late ’80s into the ’90s after digesting the music that came before. It’s just a fascinatingly rich heritage.
Paul Chastain: I don’t know when somebody says power pop, which bands they’re talking about. There are so many different spokes in that wheel. Is Cheap Trick a power pop band? Maybe, but I don’t think of them as a power pop band, but I love them. That’s a good thing because my original problem with it sort of goes away at that point. After all, it does include a lot of stuff.
LP: At this point in my life, when I hear something referred to as power pop, I think, “Oh, okay, this is going to be literate and good-sounding music.” Whether or not it’s exactly for me, I know that, in general, the music will have some craft to it.
Paul Chastain: It’s become so general, and maybe it was then, too, and I just didn’t realize it. It is a broad thing, and that’s okay because the tag helps point people to find you in the sea of so many things trying to be found.
Recording and Collaboration
LP: The Small Square has a classic sound—not in terms of dated, but as a recognizable sound. What’s really cool about that is it’s very modern in terms of how you guys work together, given the reality of geography and the other people you bring in. It seems like you’ve reached this point where you get a best-of-both-worlds sort of scenario where you can go out to the studio and record together, but you also have the benefit of this sort of global village of musicians in your network that you can tap into. How has that affected you as an artist?
Paul Chastain: It’s a huge thing. I’m still amazed that I can send a file to someone, or they can send me a file, and I can add it to my session. I remember when you couldn’t do that. You had to take someone into the studio; it was the only way to make a decent recording.
I would have loved to have worked like this when I started. I can’t imagine what that’d be like. In Providence, we did some Velvet Crush demos on reel-to-reel and then moved to ADAT tapes, which are digital. They look like a VHS cassette, but it’s a digital format with eight tracks. If you want to do more than eight tracks, you must chain multiple machines. So I had a couple of machines and could do sixteen tracks.
That was the beginning for me—you could send that tape to someone in the mail and have them contribute to it. And I remember being so thrilled at the concept and the thought of being able to do that. Like, “Wow, I could get someone in a different place, even a different country, to be on this recording.” It’s just so commonplace and how I operate on every project.
It’s changed a lot, but I think how I make a song hasn’t changed much. I do what I do. So when I go to John’s farm, I bring whatever I’ve been working on to the studio there, which is a proper recording studio. Some are a full demo where you can tell what the song is. And sometimes it’s like, “I have this idea,” or anything between those different things.
Depending on what I bring into the studio, the process affects what we do. If I bring something John likes, we’ll do it close to my demo. But sometimes, I’ll bring in a fully blown demo, and John will say, “Well, I like the song, but let’s try to do it in a different way than that.” So then we deconstruct that, and we try something different. Or I don’t even have a finished song, and we work on it there.
Maybe somebody there would work with us in the studio that day, like our friend, R. Walt Vincent. He’s a producer, bass player, keyboard player, and multi-instrumentalist. So with somebody like that, who’s there with us, he’s part of the process, and we work out a song together or fix one that we’re stuck on. We use the person’s talent and knowledge to help with the process.
Doing it that way is interesting because I like not knowing the outcome. I like some of the songs I bring in, but sometimes I’m I just have the seed of an idea, and I think, “That’s cool, but so what? Who cares? Make me care.” (laughter) So John and whoever else we have working that day with us will make that happen, and I can’t foresee what that will be, and that’s cool. It’s fun and super creative.
LP: It sounds like what you’re talking about is a very human mixture of openness and trust in these people you’re collaborating with. You’re open to the idea that maybe their input is better than what you initially thought. And I could imagine there are certainly musical situations where there’s more of an auteur approach where it’s like, “No, this is the demo. I need you to play my idea better than I can on the demo.”
Paul Chastain: I think that happens, too, but maybe less so because I like to play. I’m not the greatest musician probably in the world, but I want to play on the songs. But I also recognize when I don’t know what to do, or it’s beyond what I can do.
I should also add that when we have people in the studio, we generally have a little playlist or even a CD of the songs. We play the songs or fragments on a boom box and say, “What would you like to work on? Did any of those hit you?”
So we get their emotional reaction, like what they respond to. We try to start with the ball in that court. Our advantage is that everyone has some kind of emotional reaction to the song, and then together, we build it or do whatever we need to do.
I try to approach it like that. I don’t like to tell people what to play. I want them to do their thing because what they do isn’t what I do, and I want to see what that is. It doesn’t always work out. I’ve taken contributors out in a mix because the song gets to a different point. For example, maybe someone else added a part, and then I understood that was the direction that seemed the most obvious and the most pleasing. And the original part isn’t helping us reach the goal I have now identified. I hate doing that as I didn’t identify the goal when they contributed, but their contribution helped me reach that point. Their contribution was a building block, but maybe I won’t use it in the final analysis. Generally, I don’t do that.
LP: Well, it’s not wasted if it helps you achieve the result.
Paul Chastain: Yeah, it’s never wasted. I’m thinking of the song “Open Up” on the new record. We did that song with a large ensemble, the same ensemble that did “Found Object.” I took parts off the song after we asked our friends in the band Shoes to contribute vocals and the lead guitar. After they put that stuff on the track, I knew it was a straight-up power pop song, and it shouldn’t be anything else.
So, anything else that didn’t go in that lane, to me in my mind and my heart, I had to pull out. I think I replaced the bass on it with my bass, and maybe I took a guitar off that somebody had contributed because it just wasn’t necessary. I didn’t know what the song was trying to be at the time of those contributions.
LP: The way I hear all that is, once a song starts to take shape, every decision begins to be in the ruthless service of the song. It has to serve the song.
Paul Chastain: Yes. And I try to keep extra stuff out of it. Sometimes, I come out of the sessions at John’s studio, and we don’t have time to do overdubs. We try to get drums. That’s the most important thing. And then maybe I’ll do a bass or a guitar or vocals sometimes, but usually, they’re not finished when I leave there. So I bring them home to Japan. Then I have more time. Usually, I have to finish the lyrics or the melodic parts of it anyway.
Then, the songs might change further after I digest what we’ve got. At the time, I didn’t always know. We do the song in the studio and then move on to the next one. And then later, it’s like, “This is cool.”Do I need to do this, or do I need to figure it out?” Or maybe I need John to do the drums again because I want to do the song differently. That happens, too.
It’s a little hit-and-miss, but I try to go with this organic flow. It might sound different a bit later—weeks later, or months even—once I finish a song. I take it and go, “Okay, what am I feeling in this song? What am I hearing?” I finish most of them that way.
Sometimes, we finish tracking at John’s studio, but usually, there’s no time. Generally, we jam while there and try to do the stuff we need to do together. I can do vocal tracks and things at home easily enough.
LP: In the course of an album, how many in-person batches of sessions do you get with John? Is it like you just go track and then go home and finish? Or do you go back and forth a couple of times?
Paul Chastain: I go back one to three times. In the case of this last record, there were probably three sessions. Our friend had his two-inch analog machine in one session at John’s studio. So we recorded some of those songs with all these other musicians on two-inch. We had four or five musicians, along with John and myself, and we were tracking live, without vocals, to two-inch tape. It was kind of like a circus.
The Intimacy of Collaboration
Paul Chastain: The piano in the first song on the record, “Twenty-Third,” was John’s idea. He had this little piano figure; it was just him and me in the studio. His song needed a bridge part, so I wrote one. When we recorded the song, he started the Pro Tools session and came back out. We have the click track going.
John plays his part. When we reached the end of his verse and chorus section, he held the last key down—the bass note on the piano. And I slide in on the piano bench and play the bridge part.
And then we do it again. At the end of the bridge part, I’m holding my key down, and he slides back in. He finishes the song and plays the rest of his part. We didn’t have to do it that way, but it was just the two of us working, and it was fun.
You could overdub stuff, but playing on a grand piano is harder to edit together convincingly. So it was better to do it in one shot. That’s an example of nobody else being around, just us, not even an engineer. I’m not sure how we decided to do it that way. And that typifies the record—how it went from one or two people to ten people doing something and everything in between.
LP: I will take the romantic point of view and say that the way you did, that mattered quite a bit because it’s such an intimate reflection of the nature of collaboration, even from the sonic point of view, like capturing the ringing tones of the piano and all the decay.
Paul Chastain: Oh, cool. I’m not sure that we thought about it in those terms. I remember figuring out a bridge thing, and he said, “Oh, I can’t play that.” And I said, “Well, I can play that.” And we just did it. It didn’t take us very long, so it must have been the right choice. If it had been a nightmare, we would have done it differently.
DIY-ness
LP: I read that you refer to yourself as DIY. Back in the day, DIY almost referred to an aesthetic, right? It’s almost like punk or post-punk, indie rock. I just think firmly of the early mid-’80s DIY aesthetic, such as with ‘zines and cassette tapes. It conjures this whole thing in my head. But today, DIY can refer to independent musicians wearing all the hats—you’re the songwriter, you’re the performer, you’re the engineer, you’re the mixer, you’re the—it’s endless.
Paul Chastain: I like the creative part of it. But it’s difficult when you’re also the promotion department, the sales department, and the ‘everything’ department. That’s the stuff I’m not great at doing. I’m even learning more as we put this record out, and I like knowing how to do all those things. So that’s my DIY-ness, I guess. Today, you must do a little or a lot of those things, depending on who you’re working with.
LP: Did that come on fast, or did you wake up one day and say, “Oh my gosh, now I’m sales and promotion and marketing and everything else.” Did you see the industry shift happening?
Paul Chastain: I could see it but didn’t know how to navigate it. I learned a lot—though I’m still learning—when we re-released the first Small Square record on John’s label, Farm to Label Records, which also released the new album. During those two records, I had to learn how you work with digital platforms, which was kind of a rude awakening. Once I just committed to the record, I said, “Well, this is the only way I can do it. So I have to figure it out.” I did hire a PR person, but I didn’t hire any digital salesperson because I just didn’t have the budget to hire out everything. I tried to do everything I could in-house.
Since I’m not in the States, there’s stuff that John has to deal with. It’s hard for me to, for instance, make business phone calls to the States a lot of the time because of the time difference. I could call somebody at four in the morning, but that’s not when I’m at my best, which isn’t practical. John has to deal with that stuff on that side of the ocean.
LP: It’s a recurring theme in many conversations with artists I speak to, especially folks who started twenty to thirty years ago, as opposed to ten to twenty years. The internet in the ’90s is the demarcation line, right? There was more of an infrastructure if you were already a professional before the internet hit. Budgets and staffing were different—it was a different world. And now, all of a sudden, one has to realize, “Oh man, all these things are my responsibility.” It’s interesting to hear the range of reactions from artists because it’s everything you imagine. Some people embrace it, others begrudgingly do it, and others are mad. (laughter)
Paul Chastain: The more I know about it, the less I mind it, and the more I understand it. But the problem is it can take as long as you will give it. I don’t just wake up and have a fully blown song in my head and record it that day. It doesn’t happen like that. Creating takes a bunch of time. So, the two things that must go together often fight for time. And I’m not sure who the winner is on that, but I feel there’s not enough time to do both things effectively.
As I get better at doing the promotion and all that stuff, it takes less time because you’re more efficient and know what’s up. But right now, it’s so draining. I say, “I’d love to work on a song today. That’d be great.” I would do that for fun if I could take a break from the other stuff.
LP: So, if we call this an album cycle, where are you?
Paul Chastain: We’re near the end of phase one of the promotion cycle. I’m trying to have some artist and producer friends do remix songs from Ours and Others. The first one, which I think is almost done, is from Jeff Murphy from Shoes. I’m considering releasing those as singles that aren’t on the record but refer back to the record. Then I’d like to get more remixes if I can afford that.
LP: The remix idea allows you to have another reason to publicly talk about the album without having to be on the road.
Paul Chastain: I thought it’d be a way to get more life out of the record and that getting somebody else’s take on the songs would be cool. We can advertise that this person is doing this, and their fans, who may not be aware, can check it out. But it’s kind of selfish because I want to hear what other producers would do with these songs.
LP: It sounds like you’re getting a fine handle on this promotion thing, getting other artists involved.
Paul Chastain: I just need to be able to pay for it. That’s the only thing.
LP: Yeah, that pesky reality. (laughter)
Paul Chastain: I dream of getting Mitch Easter to do one. He worked on the two Velvet Crush records we did, and I always loved his stuff. So, I’m trying to figure out whether I can do that. So that might be something to look for after the Jeff Murphy/Shoes version comes out. I’d like to work with Mitch again sometime, and I wouldn’t be there, but I’d still have his involvement in a song. That would be meaningful to me.
The Creative Regimen
LP: As an artist, do you have a regimen? Do you have writing days, or is it like catch-as-catch-can?
Paul Chastain: I seem to be fresher about songwriting in the morning, so I’ll try to get ideas down then. Usually, that’s my main creative time. If I get a chance later in the day, I’ll dig through some ideas I like. “Okay, what songs did I come up with this week? Let’s see what they were.” Maybe it’s just this little wick or a whole song I heard in my head.
So whatever it is, I’ll record it with a voice recorder and save it for later. If I’m lucky, I’ll have almost the whole song. I’ll work like that nearly every morning if I’m in that mode, which I haven’t been during the promotional phase of this new record. I haven’t been doing too much songwriting.
LP: Hearing how you work, with flexibility and adaptability, seems like a very Midwestern attribute—that you deal with whatever situation comes at you. Did you find that it helped you during the pandemic? Because I’ve talked to artists who have said it shut them down creatively, the isolation and the lack of interaction with other musicians. Whereas, as someone who can work remotely and has that ability, did you keep going in any meaningful way?
Paul Chastain: I still did the same thing. What affected me was trying to find a home for this record, Ours & Others. It changed the situation because nobody knew what was going to happen. And so I failed to find a label to put out the album. Also, I couldn’t play or do any live stuff or go to the States, which I usually do once or twice a year.
But as far as working on stuff, I kept doing that. Maybe it changed slightly because more people were around like my family was here more than before. But I don’t think it interrupted me too much. It was more of the business side that was turned upside down. We had to think of a different way to do things, and John decided to start Farm to Label Records, a label arm of his studio.
Accidents In Recording
LP: On this record, it seems like there are some different textures and sounds from keyboards or synthesis. Do you have a musical notion of the next evolution? Are you going to buy a theremin? (laughter) Is there an avenue?
Paul Chastain: I don’t work like that. There are a bunch of synthesizers on this record, but all that stuff is spur of the moment. There wasn’t a plan. For example, “N. Main Blues” has a big synthesizer part. I played a Wurlitzer sound recorded in MIDI. I thought, “Yeah, that’s cool, but maybe I need some weirder sounds.”
I recently got some plugin synthesizers. Some of them are models of vintage synths that I used before, but there was one crazy Yamaha synth I didn’t know. I put it on the MIDI track with the Wurlitzer keyboard, and the synthesizer’s setting was a random ‘sample and hold’ thing. It just started going off. And I was wearing headphones and thinking, “That is cool.”
There wasn’t a plan to use it—it just happened. When I heard that sound, I was like, “Oh my God, that’s got to go on this song because that’s amazing.” But maybe it’s not so amazing.
LP: That’s a crazy experience to sit down and play, whether a piano piece or anything and overlay a different plugin or sample instrument. Suddenly, it has nothing to do with what it sounded like as a straight piano.
Paul Chastain: I thought, “Oh, it’s going to be like strings, fake strings or whatever.” Then I punched a button, and it was on this crazy ‘sample and hold’ thing. I wasn’t ready for what it would sound like to play the chords’ notes. It went, (imitates synth sounds) “beep, beep, beep, beep,” and it was all over the place, panning in stereo. I was like, “Oh, I gotta use this.”
That’s how I write and record songs—in the moment. I normally don’t have a plan about it. I let the song decide. I could focus on planning more, but I don’t seem to work like that.
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