Mammal... Marsupial... The Shipping News

My only revenge is to reveal what the secret words they use during sound check to check their mic levels. Jason: "Mammal... marsupial... marsupial... marsupial... mammal... marsupial... marsupial... marsupial... science fascinating!" Jeff: "Veggie patty... caraway seed... caraway seed... caraway seed... Big Bird... Big Bird... Big Bird... Big Bird... Ernie... Ernie... Ernie..."

What is the big deal about The Shipping News? Well, they are some indie rock heavyweights from the old school, Jeff, Jason Noble on bass and vocals, and Kyle Crabtree on the skins. Jeff played guitar with Jason in Rodan back in the day. Rodan recorded a huge record, Rusty, for Touch and Go/Quarterstick then split up. Jeff played in the more delicate but equally great June of '44 while Jason hooked up with the equally ambitious but not so screamy Rachel's. A couple of years ago they started making vast, exploratory rock under the name The Shipping News and have put out a couple of records on Quarterstick.

For more on what kind of music The Shipping News are playing these days, check out this review.

Is the Shipping News, either as individuals or as a group, members of the Bad Boy Club?

I'm certainly not. I think I'm a member of the soft, somewhat erotic club. I think Jason is more bad boy, like bad boy in the vision of Michael Jackson as opposed bad boy in the vision of the gang that Michael Jackson fights in the "Thriller" video. Kyle is more of a good ol' boy, kind of Tom Wopat-ish, "Dukes of Hazzard," in the most beneficial way. I would assume maybe we are perceived as being somewhat of a bad boy band because we are a little bit brooding, and a little bit self-indulgent in terms of long passages and lots of space.

What about the Babysitter's Club? Ever been affiliated with the Babysitter's Club?

Never been affiliated with the Babysitter's Club, but I have in fact been a babysitter on several occasions.

Like as a sitting scab? Were you crossing any picket lines? Babysitting without being affiliated with the club?

No, nothing like that. I'm a gentle human. I like children. What do you think of my shirt? Do you like my shirt?

I like your shirt. I love the faux-mother of pearl snaps, I think that's a bonus to any shirt. I like the dual-pocket with the western-style yoke.

What do you think of Steve Martin?

He's alright.

Did you watch the Academy Awards?

I live in Los Angeles, we are required by law to watch the Academy Awards.

Did you enjoy Steve Martin's performance?

We was more palatable than Billy Crystal.

He was not as sweaty. In fact his face looked as dry as a saltine cracker through most of the performance, no oil, nothing. It looked like he was wearing eye makeup, copious amounts.

I was a little disappointed that it was bit a tame.

I thought he was little bit shrewd, he kinda ribbed on some people in a pretty pointed, direct way.

I was waiting for Russell Crowe to hit him.

I thought that was gonna happen.

[Prolonged anecdote about Steve Martin. Brian McMahon enters disrupting the interview, much to my delight. Then Jeff and I begin again.]

So what happened with June of '44.

We broke up in November of 1999, in Belgium, our last show. For the most part it was just musical differences, but it ended up becoming personal issues and rifts. All we really needed to do was say "We've run it into the ground, lets not do this anymore," and then everybody became friends again. The whole thing about June of '44 was that it was a melting pot of different styles, it wasn't necessarily about any one particular anything. Doug's principle interest in music making is ambient electronic music, Fred's principle interest in music making is mainly free jazz and improv. At this point, Sean and I are probably the most congruent. But when we rehearsed and were writing songs, my main concern was that there was no particular thing that we had to do. It was just, "Let's do everything that feels right." It got to a point to where only one particular thing was feeling right.

For me, I'm prideful of June of '44, I'm really happy about what we were able to do in five years, starting from nothing and we went all around the world. Its kind of a crazy thing, but I'm still really happy with what we've done and how we've gone about things. I think everyone is doing stuff now that they really care about. There are certainly differences in the direction that we've each taken, which makes me really happy as well. It would have been really unfortunate if we'd broken up and Doug and Fred went on to make music that was very much like June of '44.

That was the principal reason June of '44 broke up, changes in the directions, aspirations, hopes. I was having a really hard time implanting myself on the newer things that we were coming up, just couldn't find it, and I think that frustrated everyone immensely.

The Shipping News works a bit slower than some other bands: in about four years you have cranked out about 13 songs. Are you only giving us the good stuff or do you work on a song until it's good?

We are really pretty particular about what arrives on record. But the principle reason that we haven't been able to produce as much music as we'd like to is just other things taking precedence. This year has been a really productive Shipping News year. We're trying to impose certain deadlines on ourselves. I've freed up a lot of my schedule so that I can commit more time to Shipping News because it's certainly within the realm of music that I want to make. We write a lot of songs, and maybe twenty to thirty percent of them we throw in the towel. I can think of four or five songs that we've played live that have never been recorded. When we're together we are extremely prolific, but we haven't spent too much time playing together.

We've thought of this on this tour and something that we all like to do is work on demonstrative demo tapes. We thought it'd be kind of an interesting thing to, under the masthead Shipping News, work on music on our own time, record it really cheaply--recording songs could later be brought to fruition. They would be fully realized demos that could be put out on limited release, on EPs. [Like the In the Fishtank series], we'd give ourselves a two-day deadline: I'll be in Chicago, and I'll record as much music as I can in two days and send it to Louisville. Jason and Kyle will be doing the same thing. We'll sequence it and release it. That's kind of a means to force deadlines on something that's not as much of a push as maybe an LP would be for Touch and Go. We could write a lot of music in the span of a year and then figure out which songs we would work on as Shipping News band songs.

The Shipping News is the first band that you are the only guitarist. Do you find that markedly different from being in a band with another guitar player that you can play off of?

Man, that totally helps. Playing with Sean was one of the most amazing things in my life, and playing with Jason when we were in Rodan as well. But as far as Shipping News, with the three piece element, it's been really a challenge for me to try to not overcompensate, not be like, "Well, I need to play two parts at once." It's been a really interesting challenge to try not to overplay, to make sure there is enough space in the songs.

Was there any apprehension about working with Jason again after playing together in Rodan?

No, not at all. We went in to write music for a radio broadcast, and sat down and started playing with each other, and it was like we hadn't stopped playing with each other at all. It made perfect sense and we started writing new songs together.

How do you feel about how Rodan became much more popular after you disbanded?

I think that's kind of an inevitability. Rodan was kind of an anomaly for me. It's amazing that any of this works. That I can come to LA and play a show. It's amazing to me that I can play guitar with Jason and Tara and Kyle and then to have a show and be able to even play it and have someone from Touch and Go call us and ask us if we want to make a record. "We practice in a basement in Louisville, KY, this is my second time trying to make music with anyone, and you want to put out my record?"

On the new Shipping News record there is "Nine Bodies, Nine States," which is not a new song, and there is "The March Song," which sounds like something from the last June of '44 record [Anahata], but what about the other songs which are more sparse, more atmospheric, using different kinds of instruments? What sparked this change?

We had a lot more time to record the record. We recorded it all at home, so we had a lot of freedom as far things as how things were going to be recorded as well as how much time we actually wanted to use--maybe just me being in the shop overnight putting extra guitar tracks that weren't actual parts, they were just noises and scrapes and stuff like that. Things that, if we were in a recording studio would seem like a waste of time, but that's the kind of stuff that we love. Jason puts a really bizarre keyboard part over one of our newer songs that I love, and maybe we wouldn't have been able to arrive at that had we been in a studio without the time to actually explore that stuff.

Unfortunately our live shows are pretty tame, we can't afford to bring two extra people with us, which would be an amazing thing to have in a live performance. So the records are kind of a collage of songs that we actually made that became our banes, our nemeses, because we can't really perform them fully live.

Do you see the band as moving away from the kind of rock riffage that you have been associated with in the past towards something that's a little less traditional, maybe a little bit more experimental in that sense?

No, I think we're gonna play some pretty riffage rock, some kind of hard songs, we have more of that in us. But it's interesting because I think we've been kind of an exploratory band. On our first record there was a lot of stuff that was not by any means traditional in its organization or sound. The songs that are experimental are probably going to be a lot more spaced out and crazy, and the songs that are rock songs are going to be a lot harder, a lot more shrill and abrasive.

At fakejazz we make no pretense of journalistic integrity or objectivity, so this is your opportunity to explain why The Shipping News is the greatest band in the world and we will print whatever you want.

It's because of the way we met each other that makes us the greatest band in the history of great bands. I was waiting for the bus and 7th and Kimball in Chicago, and I saw Jason waiting for the bus as well. We both got on the bus, and we made knowing glances at each other, looked at each other. Got off the bus, went home, immediately called the Chicago Reader and they have this section in the personals, the Missed Connections, and I took out a Missed Connections out for Jason. It said, "Dear Handsome Man on the Kimball bus, 4:30 in the afternoon, Thursday, March 3, 1996. Please respond to this Missed Connection ad, I need you in my life." He called me two weeks later. We set up a band rehearsal practice. Kyle Crabtree, I don't even want to go into I met Kyle Crabtree. It's a pretty filthy story in its own right.