Interview: Tim Kasher
Posted 07/04/2010 07:49AM by happyknappy11 as Interview
To provide this interview with some sort of context, it was done back in March, well the 8th to be exact, while Cursive was on tour with The Alkaline Trio. I was led by their tour manager to their tour bus behind the venue where I see the entire band laying around and resting before the show. Lead singer and guitarist Tim Kasher waves to me as he welcomes to their bus while preparing himself a cup of tea. We walk to the back of the bus where we are able to converse about Mama, I’m Swollen, which had been out for around a year at this point, and his struggles with being a performer and writing songs. Being in a band that was at the forefront of Saddle Creek’s beginning years, Kasher has made himself a household name in the indie rock world with both The Good Life and Cursive. We even talked a little bit about his movie Help Wanted Nights and how his songwriting benefits from writing screenplays.
So, for someone my age, I’ve been listening to your band since The Ugly Organ, which is the first time I was turned onto the band. So I grew up in the era of Domestica and The Ugly Organ. And this generation now, I know you’ve talked about this with other people, this generation now have grown up on Happy Hollow and Mama, I’m Swollen. I guess, what’s it like to be playing to a new generation?
When we were kind of getting over a certain hump of having been in the band and being in the band for a little while, probably around The Ugly Organ, because we had been in the band for awhile at that point, there used to be a lot of talk amongst all bands, I mean, realizing you’re 27 or so. Kind of not quite young anymore but not old by any stretch, there was a lot of conversation about like, "Oh, it’s such a drag playing to these teenagers, why aren’t our peers growing up with us injecting this music and continuing to listen to this music.” Selectively, you have to get over that hump and it’s kind of frustrating. More and more time goes by and you start to realize that actually the bands that can’t survive are the ones that can’t connect to new crowds. That’s like a new generation of music listeners that are checking stuff out. So there’s actually a lot of compliment to your own personal relevance that you’re still writing stuff to the next album of music listeners. They tend to be pretty disowning, too, I know I was when I was a teenager, I was really picky about what I listened to.
I think everyone still is, too. I know there’s always that thing where you listen to bands and it’s like, for you guys for instance, not to bring it up, I don’t know if it’s a sore subject at all, but a band like Every Time I Die when every kid brings up Burial Plot Bidding War they’re like, ‘We’re not writing that anymore.’ With you guys, I know with Domestica or The Ugly Organ, those were your peaks that everyone goes to, do you guys feel that pressure to have to write those two albums or that album for this generation?
Um, no, I don’t feel that at all. As a writer, that seems so uncool. I would like to believe that even for those people out there who would prefer to hear me say, ‘Oh yeah, I’d like to write another Ugly Organ,’ that ultimately, wouldn’t they rather hear that that would just be so uncool to just slum back into my old ways?
Well maybe not the old writing style of that, but something that connects like it did with those kids back then?
Oh right. Well as far as that’s concerned, I mean, that gets into a much more, I don’t know, that’s a much deeper question than what connects and what doesn’t. Every record you write you always want it to connect. And then that becomes the mystery of what really hits and what doesn’t. I’ll certainly say that every time I set out to do a record, sure I’m wanting to put out different records and I openly was challenged with spite and just totally being like, ‘I’m just going to put out this totally different stuff.” But in the end I don’t want anybody not to be able to connect to it. It’s not that I was turning away from people, I was just taking on bigger challenges; taking on greater risk.
Do you feel there might be the same pressures as there were when you were writing back then, or do you that you personally as a writer, or even as a band as a collective whole, that you guys have become more comfortable with who you are?
Yeah, that’s a really good way to put it actually. Because I have felt those pressures before… well what are those pressures based off of? It’s like they’re based off of a bunch of articles. So like, why are you feeling pressure to … like, what is the pressure? What is the root of it? It’s the pressure to succeed. Well why is it so important to succeed? Why is it so important to be successful? So then it would be a monetary band and that’s certainly… that’s really a dark hole to go into if you’re only going to write for monetary gain. So, yeah, I’ve been feeling really good about stripping away the necessity for success and stripping away the necessity to have money. Try to take it off until the pressure should be the pressure upon yourself to write with clarity and to keep writing records where you feel you’re taking another stab at that connection.
Just try and take a different route?
Yeah, definitely.
I’ve been reading up on a bunch of different interviews, and I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not as familiar with The Good Life as I am with Cursive, but I still appreciate it for what it is, but you said you kind of blended what The Good Life is and what Cursive is on Mama, I’m Swollen , what exactly does that mean?
I guess that it just means that it was intentional. We weren’t really ready to respond to what was kind of a backlash of people being like, “Oh, this just sounds a lot like Good Life.” We really just weren’t sure what to say because we actually are kind of The Good Life. It’s the same songwriter who’s just writing these different albums. All that being said, that was just where we were for Mama, I’m Swollen. It was like, "Well, what other things can we do with Cursive?” I think that kind of pairing with certain songs on Mama, I’m Swollen like the last song, ‘What Have I Done?’, would probably be a Good Life song. But that didn’t make it less of a Cursive song because it’s still one of my songs.
Yeah, that’s actually one of my favorite songs from you guys.
Yeah, a lot of people like that one. It’s just, we want to keep trying to do different things and there’s probably limitations to all the different things we can try. Maybe it would make more sense to say that we wanted to be able to apply more of a folk sensibility to Mama, I’m Swollen that ultimately lends itself to, ‘Well that’s The Good Life thing.’ We kind of knew that, so it was easy enough for us to see, ‘Well, just because it’s not the band with The Good Life, doesn’t mean…’
Doesn’t mean you can’t be Cursive.
Yeah. Doesn’t mean that we can’t be borrowing from this same Americana, and play it in our louder, more aggravated way, I guess. It also doesn’t mean I have a problem doing that now, I feel like we’ve done it. If anything, it’s taught me like, ‘Oh, that was interesting. I liked doing that record.’ Now I kind of want to go back to splitting the two. I like the idea that if I’m gonna don an electric guitar with a Marshall amp, then I probably just rather play a rock song. And all of these thoughts don’t make any album right or wrong, it’s just trying out all these different things.
Do you feel like it’s just being too picky?
Yeah, it’s being really deconstructive.
Do you see that as unfair to you guys? Or that it’s just the way it is and you have to deal with it?
People like to talk about music. Part of any medium is there’s the art of deconstruction and criticism, and all of that. Some of us totally thrive on that. I really thrive on film criticism, I really get into it and I like to read up on it. I don’t really get into music criticism that much. I just think it’s natural; it’s only natural and pretty normal. No, it’s not wrong, but you’re also right in saying, ‘At the end of the day, does it really matter? Do you like it or do you not like it?'
I don’t know if it’s just for people to talk about, but I know, as a music critic myself, and as someone who looks at and analyzes music that I fall into that category. But do you ever feel that when you were younger, maybe not now, that you fell into that category?
Of music criticism?
Of being that deconstructive towards music?
Oh yeah, I mean I get really deconstructive about my own music. As far as music and as far as what’s out there in the world, I tended to be more of just a fan, like a fair-weather fan and just kind of enjoy it. I think a lot more of that criticism I think I just obliged myself.
I read in another interview that you aspired to be a rock star, do you feel you guys have achieved this rock star status, or the status you would want at this moment in time?
Uh, yeah, I mean, I’m not sure what context I would have said that. I may have said that at a point where it might have been in reference to… Over the years I’ve kind of learned how to embrace being a performer and I spent the bulk of those early touring years being pretty hesitant to, uh… like always signing up for wanting to write songs, you know, being a writer in that sense and recording them and getting them out to people and gauging reaction. But it was in reference to signing up to playing hundreds of shows a year, but I took on a ‘if you can’t beat em’, join em’ attitude and started figuring out how to embrace being a performer and started recognizing that there’s so much skill and quality to that, too. And that might even sound weird to some people where they want their music to be raw and honest. But then there’s this whole other side to it, which is like, ‘Yeah, but I’m going out and saying the same thing every night.’ I feel like for me I became reluctant to it and I learned how to really get into it and now I enjoy it on some level. I used to hate actors, I used to think actors were really, the concept of acting was really shitty, taking someone else’s words and speaking them. And I totally feel differently now, I think there’s this whole art of performing that is almost fully different and it’s not hiding itself.
In kind of the acting sense, it seems like a lot of your songs have characters, and I know this may be an obvious answer, but how much of yourself do you inject into your characters that you’ve kind of created?
Probably most of my songs, but there will always still be semblances of people I know. Mostly I’d say it’s just variations of my own encounters. It can sometimes sicken me a little bit when writers write outwardly and attacking others. It makes me think like, there’s such a wealth of things to write about in your own head, and if you’re not willing to confront yourself and try and to openly or honestly express those problems and instead have to attack other people, I think there’s a certain amount, in the past, I’ve seen all sorts of shallowness through that.
Yeah. Do you think of it as a cop-out sometimes?
Yeah, I would say that I have almost have never done something like that.
Well, do you try and write about yourself, not even someone that you know, but construct a character as opposed to complete fiction?
Yeah, that’s what a lot of Happy Hollow was. That was an intentional practice with trying to do every record differently, I also realized that I needed to start taking on new challenges. So that almost conversely could be a cop-out that I can just be writing about my own disabilities, so at that point, writing outside of ourselves as characters that were pretty much still based on yourself but still be pretty fictional, you know? But even then, when I was writing I still didn’t… there were no characters in Happy Hollow that I can think of that weren’t specific people in my life that I was like really attacking, or something like that.
It’s not wrong, but maybe it’s just not your thing?
Maybe not, maybe it’s just not my thing. It seems unfair. Because when I do attack people, it seems like I generally also let their voice be heard in the music, too.
Like try to write from their perspective?
Yeah, so I’m singing from different points of view. And you’re singing from different point of view often times as well to kind of try to give a second voice and to try and offer various sides to an argument.
Yeah. Well back to the song ‘What Have I Done’, it almost feels like, to me personally, it seems like it stripped any sort of mask that would be your characters and is completely about you. I don’t know if I’m completely off on that, but it kind of seemed like there was a sense of regret looking back on things. Is that how you feel about life on the road and being and artist?
I agree with you, it definitely sticks out on the album a little bit where it seems like that character is a little more exposed on that song, but I still hold that to look at that album as a whole, it should still be considered whatever character it is. But it is, at the same time, because of the way the story is laid out, it seems a little more revealing. But no, I think a question like that is one that’s going to present itself in anyone’s life. I don’t see it as specific to anything, necessarily, but for me it’s probably specific in the sense of I’ve never really achieved some kind of contentment or I’ll never get enough finished. But also, I don’t know, I think there are things about that song that apply to me that I didn’t fully confront. I think that song can be confusing for people, too, to decipher if they’re trying to read on my life specifically because it seems like I’ve been running around doing what I want to do for the last 10 years (laughter). So, it’s just like I said, those kinds of questions apply to everybody.
I guess when I first heard it is just seemed like, this is Tim Kasher in a confessional style. But I guess it can be left up to interpretation.
I think you can see it that way, but also I think it should be used as a whole album.
Absolutely. Now I know you guys have really played around with instrumentation, which I think is a really cool and unique part about you guys, and so after Gretta [Cohn] left, after The Ugly Organ, the idea of revisiting the strings you were just like, ‘Fuck it, let’s go to brass.' Is that what you intended to do? Have you always wanted to work with brass, and to kind of branch off that, are there other forms of instrumentation you want to go to?
I think that there was just a lot of… as far as all of that is concerned I kind of see it as just I’m still really young in that respect and I was really figuring out how strings work.In between those records was a Good Life record [Album of the Year] where we kind of did a lot of ethnic percussion and so I see it just as being really young and naïve and figuring out how all of it works, but also collecting it all as I’m going through the years. Learning how to directly apply what were once these kinds of unusual orchestral instruments and learning how they work.
What I thought was interesting was the last time I had seen you guys in Burlington [Vermont], I was really curious to see how you would work, because you guys would be traveling with brass instruments, how you would work that into The Ugly Organ and Domestica stuff, what kind of challenges were there for you to work that out?
The other thing that I’ve been growing into is music can have a lot of freedom to reinterpret things in a way that no one wants to do it. So it’s really not that hard to do that, I don’t think. We all have our kinds of tastes. I can be kind of bored if the band tends to sound exactly like the record and I love reinterpretation. But I’m also a musician, so maybe that’s why I love reinterpretation so much. There are a lot of people who get burned because they want to hear our records exactly the way they do on the album. I just don’t subscribe to that thought. I do feel that I’m getting my money’s worth if I can hear a new version of what I already have recorded at home.
There’s been something I wanted to ask you, because I noticed it on Happy Hollow and a little bit on Mama, I’m Swollen, you kind of seem to go after religion a lot, was there anything that while you were younger that just kind of turned you against it or are you not against it and it’s just something you’re writing about?
No, I was really against it and I still am. But we all have different aggravations in our lives. religion has always really rubbed me the wrong way. I just… I’m far too interested in truth or reason. And from there, I’m willing to be as romantic as I can, as in romantically thinking. I’ll take that as far as I can within those parameters of reason, and religion just seems to be so… just way too magical. But yet, I grew up catholic and I spent 12 years, and not only did I kind of lean toward reason… I know that there’s some people who go through religious schooling and a religious upbringing and they get cut out of it. And they’re like, ‘I’m not religious anymore, so I don’t really care.’ So why is it that I hold onto it so fiercely? (laughter) Um, I don’t know. That’s just it; we all react to things differently. I know when I was doing Happy Hollow, I had a few close friends asking me, they were listening to it as I was developing it, ‘Who’s going to care about this?’ (laughter). And really what they were saying was, ‘I don’t really care, I know religion’s a sham, but why do you care so much?’ And it’s like, well, we all carry different torches and that’s kind of been my torch. When I was 14 or so I used to daydream about being successful enough that I could kind of come out and be a voice about wanting to tear down the structures of all religions, you know? But I’ve matured a lot from there, and now I just want to be – actually it’s good to be a positive voice about atheism because…
It has a lot of negative connotations attached to it.
Totally, and I think atheists still kind of have to be in the closet. In society, if you’re godless you’re also like a heathen. None of that is true, it’s just choosing this different path, lending yourself to reason and to what you consider to be truth. But the reason why I did Happy Hollow, specifically, was because The Ugly Organ was such a huge success and I thought to myself, ‘This is my one chance. This might be the tallest soap box that I’ll ever have, so I’m going to use this time to get my message across.’
I know it was hard for me, not coming out to my parents about it but more so my grandparents, about being against Catholicism and a lot of what Christian structures are, but was it hard for you with your parents or even your grandparents?
Not really, I mean, my grandma – it’s really not that big of a deal – she’s made a lot of comments, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this, my grandchildren don’t go to church.’ But, it’s fairly idle. My whole family had a really cool reaction to it, and they’re all catholic, very catholic, they still go to church every Sunday, but they all wanted to talk to me at length about Happy Hollow. It didn’t change, nobody like… And I’m not asking them to… Actually, what I was asking for really happened, was for the first time in my life, with my relationship with my family, I was talking to my Dad and my sisters and my brother-in-laws about problems with the church, and my dad saying how he recognizes that most of it’s a sham. It was great, and I was really scared, I was really nervous putting that record out. It’s good to be nervous about putting records out. If you’re not going out on a limb, then… at least I feel like you should.
With Cursive now, where do you guys plan on going or what do you think is going to be the next step for Cursive?
Uh, we’re not really sure at this point. It’s nice I said to, like I said about carrying torches, I think it’s good to carry on a tradition of playing loud and I don’t want to grow old gracefully in the sense that we see a lot of songwriters kind of settle down and settle into their wheel chair and play folk songs. So I don’t know, but it’s also something where I don’t want to force anything either. I don’t want to fabricate hard rock just because nobody else is. Maybe I say it because I fear that hard rock is becoming, at least it is in indie rock circles – there is a lack of turning up its amps.
I know you were writing a movie called Help Wanted Nights, where is it at with that movie? Because I did read somewhere it that it was bought.
I do have two production companies that are behind it. Every time I’m asked it’s difficult to answer. I’m actually getting close to shooting it, we’re actually shooting it in May. But now we’re also scrambling to finish the casting. It’s just a whole industry I’m not familiar with so I’m always asking naïve questions and being very upfront about it because I need answers of how things work. Apparently it’s not unusual, that’s how a lot of movies do get casted, especially when you’re doing a movie as small as mine. People don’t really want to say, ‘Yeah,’ because there could be a big job, like we’re shooting in May, it’s better that we ask people in mid-March or late March because they can be like, ‘Well, nothing really came up for May anyways, so yeah, sure, why not?’ (laughter).
How does screenwriting parallel to the way you write about some characters or stories in your albums?
I think in my mind, although maybe it’s abstract to some, in my mind it’s these logical steps of, I mean, even in a lot of my songs I’ve written about the frustration of trying to tell complete stories. Like unable to tell complete stories because you’re stuck to this meter, you’re stuck to these verses. So, until I started writing screenplays just a few years back, I really was getting to a point where I was feeling I was about to explode, where I was writing these records and I couldn’t get the stories out as completely as I wanted to. I really think writing screenplays have helped music out immensely for me. Because it really freed me up to have another outlet that I can tell a more complete story. Now I can go back and appreciate writing music and I still tell stories in music, and I still love to, but it doesn’t have to be the end all be all. I don’t have to be so frustrated if I can’t explain the shadows in the corner of a room in a song, you don’t have time to say that.
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Washington, DC
Awesome interview. Lots of great info.
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