Paul Chastain: The Small Square's big sounds

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

LP: So where on the planet are you?

Paul Chastain: I am in Hyōgo, Japan, at 8:30 in the morning. Just got everybody out the door here. I'm ready to rock. 8:30 is early for rock 'n' roll. It's not so early in my world. It may be early for rock 'n' roll, but I'm usually up by six.

LP: Wow. Thanks for making time. It's great to talk to you.

Paul Chastain: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

LP: If I may, I have a couple of geography questions for you. And the first one is, what brought you to Providence in the day? It seems not an obvious place to move to, especially from a big city.

Paul Chastain: My partner, Ric Menck, and I—pre-Velvet Crush time—both decided we wanted to get out of the Midwest and go to one of the coasts. He's originally from the East Coast, his family. He had some relatives who lived in Massachusetts, and we would go live at a family house that no one was currently in. They were just caretakers. We had planned to do that, but at the eleventh hour, somebody objected strongly. But everything was already in motion. So we just decided to go.

I think Ric was already out there because he had just done some dates, some early stuff with Matthew Sweet opening for 'Til Tuesday. I think he was maybe staying with our future manager, Michael Hausman, the drummer from 'Til Tuesday. So I said, "Well, I'm coming out, and we'll figure something out." When I got out there, we realized that we knew this guy, Jeffrey, who became our guitar player eventually, but he was from Wisconsin. He had a band called the White Sisters, and he had moved to Providence some years earlier than that.

We went down, and he said, "You can come and stay with me for a while, and we'll see if you want to hang out and set up shop in Providence. It's pretty cheap, much cheaper than Boston, and not far." So we did that, stayed with Jeffrey, who graciously offered, and eventually, we just rented a house there and stayed there. Then we asked Jeffrey to be our guitar player for the band, and then the three-piece Velvet Crush band was born.

LP: What's the Providence that you walked into? It's an interesting city with a bit of an interesting history. And then in the '80s and the '90s, it had a bit of a scene going on. I'm curious what you walked into.

Paul Chastain: I feel like it was kind of post-scene. There wasn't a lot going on—there were a lot of bands and stuff but nothing seemed like it was all that focused. There were little pockets of things here and there. We just got a rehearsal space and started to hunker down and decided to start doing stuff.

We put out a single. I think Ric started to talk about putting out singles from other bands and stuff as we got to know everyone, all the different musicians from the different little pockets. We became friends with all these guys, and then a scene started to form, I think, while we were there. We became pretty close friends with a lot of the bands that were around at the time, just in our area. We would do shows with everybody and we just kind of slotted ourselves in. But I feel like it was the beginning of the next thing that was going to happen there, and then the stuff that had previously happened was kind of just winding out a little bit.

LP: How do you feel about or do you think about genre at all? The cliché is, obviously it's power pop, and it seems to cast such a large net from singer-songwriters who happen to plug in their guitars.

Paul Chastain: Yeah.

LP: And I'm curious, 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: Yeah, I think it's more the latter. I never really loved—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 on stuff. I never really liked that because I never thought of us as being that, although I admit a lot of our influences are those kinds of bands or what things you would consider that kind of thing. But that's not the limit of our influences, as I think we displayed on some of the recordings.

I just never liked that sort of pigeonholing because I felt like it was so limiting. And I didn't feel like if all of our songs were one of our songs, if that was the case, then yes, we're a power pop band. But we have country rock songs, and we have freak-out songs, and all different kinds of songs that I just don't—I just never felt as a writer and the sort of voice of the band, I never felt like we are like Badfinger or we are like the Raspberries or something.

I love those bands and I wanted to have elements of those bands, but we were just as much focused on being like the Kinks or being like the Flying Burrito Brothers at times, or being like whatever. Now, I understand a little more that it's a convenience so people can get the idea of what your basic thing is. And that's not the only thing that power pop fans like.

I just never felt like I fit into that, and I sort of resented it unnecessarily, even at the time. But I always wanted just to do my thing and not call it something. It wasn't really my job to call it a thing. I want to make art, and you can say what it is, whatever. And people can agree or disagree about that, but I didn't want to be limited by that. And I don't think we were. It's just like a little mental thing with me.

LP: It's interesting how something that sort of starts as a way to have a discussion or 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 did end up being, especially with the musicians that emerged in what I would call the sort of post-indie era after the mid-late '80s into the '90s. And I guess after digesting the music that came before. It's just a fascinatingly rich heritage.

Paul Chastain: That's why I don't really know which bands—when somebody says power pop, you don't really know which kind of thing they're talking about, because there's so many different spokes in that wheel. Is Cheap Trick a power pop band? Maybe, but I don't really think of them as a power pop band, but I love them. But as you said, it's quite thick with—but I think that's a good thing, because I think that my original problem with it sort of goes away at that point, because it does include a lot of stuff, so it's okay.

LP: At this point in my life, when I hear that, or when I read something referred to as that, I think, "Oh, okay, this is going to be literate and good-sounding music." Whether or not it's exactly for me in the specific, I know that in general, oh, okay, this is going to have some craft to it.

Paul Chastain: Yeah, I think it's okay because it's become so general, and maybe it was then too, and I just didn't realize it. But I always felt aggravated by it more than anything, but I understand. And now it definitely is a broad thing, and it's actually okay because it helps point people to find you in the sea of so many things trying to be found.

LP: Well, not to linger there, but in the context of The Small Square, obviously it's a very—not classic sound in terms of dated, but a recognizable sound. What's really cool about it is it's very modern in terms of how you guys have to work together just given the reality of geography and the other people that 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 farm 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. And generationally, I think we're probably roughly in the same age as you've seen, not necessarily the business side of music change, but really the tool and technology side of music change. How has that affected you as an artist?

Paul Chastain: It's a huge thing. Because I remember—just, I'm still from time to time amazed that I can send a file to someone or they can send me a file and I can put it in my session like we've done, like I've done a bunch of times now. But I remember when that wasn't even a thought like you couldn't do that. You had to take someone into the studio with you and go in. And the only way to really make a decent recording was to go into a recording studio and do it that way.

I would have loved to have done this when I started. I can't imagine what that'd be like. But in Providence, I was doing recordings on—I moved to computer eventually, but before that, I was doing reel-to-reel. We did some Velvet Crush demos on reel-to-reel, and then I moved to ADAT tapes, which are digital. They look like a VHS cassette, but it's a digital format, eight tracks. And you have to have, if you want to do more than eight tracks, you have to have more than one machine. So I had a couple of machines, so I could do sixteen tracks.

That sort of was the beginning for me—you could actually send that tape to someone in the mail and have them contribute to it. We still weren't quite ready to be able to send files electronically like now. So now it's super, super easy. But I just remember being so thrilled at the concept, the thought of being able to do that. Like, "Wow, I could get someone in a different place, a different country, even to be on this recording. It would be so cool. Or to write songs with or do something like that." And now it's just so commonplace and occurrence. And it is how I operate on every project I have to pretty much.

So it's changed a lot. I think the basic way that I make a song hasn't changed so much. I do what I do. So when I go to John's farm, to the studio there, it's a proper recording studio, and we go, and I usually go there once or twice a year and we try to make stuff. And so what I do is I bring whatever I have, whatever I've been working on. Some things are a full demo of a thing that you can tell what the song is. And sometimes it's like, "I have this idea." Sometimes it's like a chorus part or whatever, anything in between all those different things.

So what I do is, depending on what I bring into the studio, the process affects what we do more or less. If I bring anything and John likes it, then we'll do it how I did my demo. But this also happens—I bring in a thing that's a fully blown demo, and John says, "Well, I like the song, but let's try to do it in a different way than that. Let's not do it this way." So then we deconstruct that, and we try a different thing. Or I don't even have the song finished, and we work on it there.

And then maybe there's somebody there that day that's working with us in the studio like our friend, Walt Vincent, who plays on some of the songs. 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 don't know what's wrong with it, or something like that. We use the person's talent and knowledge to help do it, so that kind of thing can only happen if we've done it in that way.

Like, if I finish the song, there's less for them to contribute to it. So depending on how I bring it in, it's really one of the interesting parts of doing it that way. Because I like not knowing the outcome of some things. Some things I'm like, "I really like this. I think this is right to the point. I like it." But sometimes I have something like, "I just have this 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's going to be, and that's cool. I like that. It's fun. It's fun and really super creative. Like you're just on the spot pulling off of everyone else's feelings about it. And I think that is one of the cool things.

LP: It sounds like what you're talking about also is a very human mixture of openness as well as trust in these people that 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 like to play on the songs. But I also try to recognize when I need a thing that is beyond either—either I don't know what to do, or it just is something that has to be beyond what I'm capable of doing.

But the other thing I should add is when we do have people in the studio, what we generally do is have a little playlist or even a CD. And so we play on this boom box, we play the songs, and then we have whoever the person or people are—like on the last record, we had a couple of songs we did with a large ensemble—we play these five, six, eight songs, whatever, or song fragments even and say, "What would you like to work on? Did any of those hit you?"

So we get their sort of emotional—like what they respond to. Because our styles aren't always perfect for each person that we have in there. Maybe they could do something. I don't know. I'm sure—but like, what do they really like? What hits them? Is there anything like, "Oh, this is cool. I like this." So we'll do that. That's how we do it. We try to start with the ball in that court where we're—you know, that's our advantage is that everyone has some kind of emotional reaction to the song and then we build it or do whatever we need to do on that song.

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 going to be what I do, so I want to see what that is. And it doesn't always work out. I've actually taken contributors off the song in a mix because I've gotten the mix to a different point through different other things. Or maybe someone else added something, and then I understood that was the direction that seemed the most obvious and the most pleasing and so maybe somebody's part—and I hate to do that because they just really contribute for fun and for free usually.

But sometimes I have done that where I think this guitar thing just doesn't—it's just not helping us reach the goal that I have now identified. And it's only because I hadn't identified the goal when they contributed, but their contribution helped me reach that point. So, it was a building block, but maybe I won't use it in the final analysis. But generally, I don't do that.

LP: Well, it's not wasted if it helps you achieve the end result. It's not wasted.

Paul Chastain: Yeah. I think it's never wasted because of the energy, or maybe—one song I'm thinking of in particular is the song called "Open Up" on the new record. And we did that song with a large ensemble, the same ensemble that did "Sound Object." I ended up taking parts off of the song after we asked our friends in the band Shoes to contribute vocals to it and the lead guitar. And so after they put that stuff on the track, I knew what I should do with the track, and it was just like a power pop song straight up, and it shouldn't be anything else.

So anything else that didn't sort of go in that lane, to me in my mind and my heart, I had to pull off. I think maybe I replaced the bass on it with my own bass, and maybe I took a guitar off that somebody had contributed because it just wasn't necessary. And at the time, I didn't know what the song was trying to be. I didn't know what we were going to make out of it.

Paul Chastain: But that song was conceived as a piece. It was a live thing, almost like a soundcheck in front of people that I wrote to do when The Small Square did a tour for our first record in Japan. And that was like a warm-up thing because you don't get soundchecks that are meaningful so much. So I arranged it so that the drums play, then the bass comes in, then the guitars, and then it's kind of over. Everything happens, and then it ends. So I brought that in. And we were like, "Oh, this is cool. Let's do this." But I said, "Well, it just needs a part. It's got like one part."

LP: No bridge.

Paul Chastain: Yeah. I didn't have a bridge. Exactly. And the ensemble wrote the bridge. We wrote the bridge together, and they figured out the chords. We threw it around for just a few minutes. It took a really short amount of time. And then I applied a melody later to that, but when we tracked it, that bridge had just been made up. Without those people there, that bridge might not have happened like that. I might have written one, but it wouldn't have been necessarily that thing. That was very important to have in the song.

Even though I might not have used all the musicians' musical contributions, their writing contributions, their ideas, and their energy for that track definitely were essential to doing it. I didn't want to take people off, but once I had it defined—do you know the band Shoes? They're like a power pop band from the '70s. So once I got them on doing their vocal thing, which really just sounds like nobody else, they have their own thing. Once I heard their voice, I was like, "Ah, I got it. I got it. I know what we need to do on this now. I know what I need to do." That was the genesis of that whole thing.

LP: The way I hear all that is, despite not coming into a session or a project with sort of every song having been totally laid out and being very sort of dogmatic about what each song has to be, once a song starts to take shape, every decision starts 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. And then sometimes I come out of the sessions at John's and we don't have time to slowly do overdubs on everything that we work on. So we try to get drums. That's the most important thing. And then maybe I'll do a bass, or I'll do a guitar or something or vocals sometimes, but usually, they're not finished when I leave there. So I bring them home. So then I have more time and usually I have to finish lyrics or sometimes even the melodic parts of it.

Like in that song, they still will further change because I sort of digest what we've got. Because, at the time, I didn't always know. We do the song, and then we move on to the next thing. I'm like, "You know, it seems cool. I don't know. Let's move on." And then later, I'm like, "Oh, I see. Yeah, this is cool." Do I need to do this, or do I need to figure it out? Or else I'm like, "Maybe I need to have John do the drums again on it because I want to do this differently." And that happens, too.

It's a little hit-and-miss, but I try to go with this sort of organic flow of it. And it's quite a bit later, weeks later, or months even, when I'm trying to finish a thing, and then it might sound really different to me at that point. But I take it and go, "Okay, what do I want to do? What am I feeling in this song? What am I hearing?" And I finish them out in that way. Most of them get done that way.

Sometimes, we finish tracking at John's, but usually, there's just not time unless I don't have many song ideas, then, we just work on them and then finish it. But generally, we jam the whole time we're there and try to do the stuff we really need to do together. I can do vocal tracks and stuff here easily enough.

LP: Your process is fascinating. It's really fascinating.

Paul Chastain: Yeah?

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: One to three, probably. Depends on how long the time span is. In the case of this last record, there were probably three sessions. Because I remember one session, those were actually recorded—we had this other friend of ours who had his two-inch analog machine at John's studio at that time. So we recorded some of those songs on two-inch, the basics because they had it all hooked up and going. And we had, so we had that going, him and another guy helping him, I think, and then all these other musicians. We had four or five other musicians, John and myself, and we were tracking live, without vocals, to two-inch tape.

So it was kind of like a circus. So, for this song, "Found Object," I used everybody's stuff. And I added something.

Paul Chastain: So that's like the big band. There were two keyboard players and John on the drums, and I played guitar with another guitar player and a bass player, and then we overdubbed steel or something like that on it. The bass player played steel also. So we did that. And so that was a whole bunch of people. Our friend Brad recording on the two-inch, doing that. He was also making a video of some of the stuff we'd be recording. Not like any of our other sessions were because there were like ten extra people around.

But the first song on the record, "Twenty-Third," the piano song, was an idea—that was John's idea. He had this little piano figure. He said, "I got this thing." I said, "Oh, that's cool. I can make something out of that. So let's do it. Let's work on it." So it was just he and I in the studio. His song needed a bridge part. I made up a bridge part. And so when we recorded the song, he ran in and started the Pro Tools session, and came back out. We have the click track going.

He plays his part. We made up a song for him, right? And then he plays his part. Then the song has these stops that are just sort of built into it. When we got to the end of his verse and chorus kind of section that he plays, he's like holding the last key down, the bass note on the piano. And I slide in on the piano bench and play the bridge part, right?

And then the same thing. So then, at the end of the bridge part, it stops again, right, and holds. And I'm holding my key down, and he slides back in. He finishes the song and plays the rest of the part he knows. And we didn't have to do it that way, but it was just the two of us working, and it was kind of fun and funny to do.

You could overdub stuff, but really, playing on a grand piano with it playing by itself makes it harder to edit the stuff together convincingly. So it was better to do it in one shot. I don't know how we decided, but that's what we did. That piano track you hear on the record is a good story, and it was kind of fun to do. But that was an example of nobody else being around, just us, not even an engineer, who we oftentimes do have help from, such as an engineer who works at John's studio.

So that sort of typifies the record—how it went from one or two people to ten people doing something and everything in between.

LP: I'm going to take the slightly romantic point of view and say that the way you did that actually mattered quite a bit because it's such an intimate reflection of the nature of collaboration. Still, also just from the sonic point of view, like getting the ringing tones of the piano, you know? All the decay and, like, I don't know. I'm firmly on the side that it matters.

Paul Chastain: Oh, cool. I'm not sure that we thought about it in those terms. I like that, but I'm not sure we considered it in those terms. I don't really remember why we decided to do it that way. We were working it out. 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 then we thought, "Okay, let's just try it this way." And we just did it. It didn't take us very long, I don't think, so it must have been the right choice. If it had been a nightmare, we would have just tried it—we got to do it differently.

LP: Yeah, that's a good indicator.

Paul Chastain: But the thing is, it's two different players, so really, if you're trying to match this stuff, it's a little bit trickier to punch things in. You can punch things all over the place with Pro Tools, but the velocity hitting the keys with, and all this stuff—it'll change just because, even if it's from take to take, like if he starts playing or I start playing in a different take, I can't hit it the same way every time because I'm not really a piano player. I don't really have that much finesse.

So there'll be variances in it. So that was actually, I think, sonically the best way to do it. But when I tell people about it, it seems like it was sort of dumb. I'm glad you—I liked your explanation of it, though. (laughter)

LP: I read somewhere else in a discussion that you refer to yourself as DIY. Obviously, back in the day, DIY almost referred to an aesthetic, right? Almost like this punk or post-punk, indie rock. I just think firmly of the early mid-'80s DIY aesthetic. Zines and cassette tapes. And, you know, it has this whole—it conjures this whole thing in my head. But obviously, in this day and age, independent musicians have to wear almost all the hats, right? Like you're the songwriter, you're the arranger, you're the performer, you're the engineer, you're the editor, you're the mixer, you're the—it's endless. You're the promotion engine.

Paul Chastain: That's the thing. I like all that other stuff. That's the creative part of it. But the other difficult part is where you just stepped into, which is you are the promotion department, and you are everything department, the sales department. And that's the stuff where I'm not great at doing. And I'm even learning how to do that more as we put this record out. And not great at it. I like to know how to do all the stuff. So that's my DIY-ness, I guess. But the stuff I like is all the other things—you know, I like to arrange the songs, and I like to try mixing the songs and all that stuff like that.

Today, you kind of have to do a little of a lot of those things, or if not all, depending on who else you're working with and whatever.

LP: Did that come on fast, or did you wake up one day and say, "Oh my God, now I'm sales and promotion and marketing and everything else." Or did you sort of see it gradually? Did you see the industry shift happening?

Paul Chastain: I could see it, but I didn't know how to navigate it so much. And I really learned a lot—I'm still learning it, but I learned a lot just right before this record. We re-released the first Small Square record on John's label, which this is also on. During those two records, I had to learn how you work with digital platforms and stuff like that, which there's a lot to know, and I still don't know it all.

But while I knew that was all going on, I did not really know how to—what it takes to do that, and all the pieces you need to have in place, which was kind of a rude awakening to come up against that. Once I just committed to doing the record, I said, "Well, this is the only way I can do it. So I have to figure it out and do what I can." I did hire a PR person, but I didn't hire any digital person because I just didn't have the budget to hire out everything. So, I tried to do everything I could in-house.

That's a lot of stuff. And I don't think it's necessarily good that I had to do it. I think there's something to it in a professional—a person who is really good at it can help you more than I could help me.

LP: I hear you. It's a recurring theme in a lot of the conversations with artists I speak with about, especially folks who started closer to twenty, thirty years ago, as opposed to ten, twenty years, you know, sort of like the internet in the '90s or the demarcation line, right? If you were already a professional before the internet hit, there was just more of an infrastructure. Budgets and staffing were different, and it was a different world. And now, all of a sudden, one has to realize, "Oh my gosh, all these things are my responsibility." It's interesting to hear the range of reactions from artists because some—well, it's everything you would 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, the more I understand it. But the problem is that it can take as long as you will give it. So, the same can be said about creating stuff at that point. That doesn't just happen for me. I don't just wake up and have a fully blown song in my head, and I'll record it that day or whatever. It doesn't happen like that. It takes a bunch of time for me. 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 like there's not enough time to do both things effectively.

And I guess as I get better at doing the other, if I keep doing that, the promotion, and all that stuff, it takes less time because you're more efficient and you know what's up. But right now, it's so draining to do the other stuff. You have to find your way back to, "Man, I could just—I'd really love to work on a song today. That'd be great." I would do that for fun if I took a break from the other.

LP: As an artist, do you have a regimen? Do you have writing days, or is it like catch-as-catch-can?

Paul Chastain: It's not really a schedule. Basically, when I start getting song ideas, I work on that kind of stuff in the morning. I seem to be more fresh about that stuff in the morning. So, I'll try to get ideas down in the morning. And then my day gets kind of broken up. Usually, that's my main creative time. And then, if I get a chance later in the day, I'll dig through some things I like. "Okay, what did I come up with this week? I remember I had a couple of ideas this week. Let's see what they were." And I'll go back and see at the time. I take it as far as I can go with it. Maybe it's just this little wick, or maybe it's a whole—like I heard a song part in my head.

So whatever it is, I'll record it, do it like a voice recorder, have it, and save it for later. So, pretty much that's how it works. And I suppose if I were very lucky, I would have almost the whole song. I could do it at that time. But really, every morning as I can, I'll work on stuff like that almost every morning if I'm in that mode, which I kind of haven't been during the promotional phase of this record. I haven't really been doing too much of that.

I've been working on some mixes of some older things that John and I recorded during the pandemic or right around there after the record. But it's not super current. And I wanted to mix those and see what they are. Like seeing if it makes sense to do something with them or not. That's been my creative outlet, but I haven't made many songs recently, unfortunately.

LP: Hearing the way you work and the ways you can work, that you have this sort of flexibility and adaptability, which it seems to play armchair psychologist, seems like a very Midwestern attribute that you sort of deal with whatever situation comes at you. But did you find that it helped you at all during the pandemic? Was the pandemic particularly difficult for you, or could you be creative? 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 would do the same thing. What affected me was I was trying to find a home for this record, Ours and Others, at that time because we'd finished it—I mean several failed attempts at finding people to put it out, and it changed the situation. What would people be willing or looking to do because nobody knew what was happening? And so I couldn't—I failed to get that put out by someone else. That's where it changed for me. Also, I couldn't play or do any live stuff, and I didn't go to the States for some time then, which I usually go once or twice a year.

But as far as working on stuff, I could still keep doing that. Maybe it changed slightly because more people were around, like my family was here more than that. But still, I don't think it interrupted that as much. It was more of the business side that just turned it upside down or blocked it for a little while. And then, we had to think of a different way to do it.

Because I'm like, "I'm going to put this record out. I'm putting this record out. I don't know what it will take, but we will put it out somehow." Then things happened, and John decided to start a label arm of his studio, which became the viable way to do it. But that all came out of maybe the pandemic. I don't know how he decided to do that, but I think he saw a need or felt a need with the artists he works with. It benefited us. It just was a little delayed, is all.

LP: Given that you both do so much and are multi-capable on the creative and technical side of your art, how would you characterize the division of labor between you and John? Or do you bother? Like, are there defined roles? It seems like you guys come together really closely as one sometimes.

Paul Chastain: There's not really defined roles. I'm really the principal songwriter. I feel like I need to come up with the songs, and then he's welcome to do songs, and he does have—he doesn't so much do finished songs, but he'll have ideas we work on mostly together when I go there. The doors are always open to that, and then I have him collaborate on mine. I say, "What do you think? What about this?" and "Blah, blah, blah. What should we do?"

And the only really defined thing is that, and then I don't know. Since they're my songs, I feel really responsible for doing something with them. And I may have more time to do that than John does. So I do more of the stuff. John's main interaction is when we're creating the stuff. When I finish stuff out, there are times when he'll come into play more, but he's really more at that moment. When we're doing it, that's when we collaborate the most.

And then, since I'm not in the States, there's stuff that he has to deal with being in the States, that has to be dealt with in the States, so that sort of figures itself out because I just can't do it. It's really hard for me to, for instance, make business phone calls to the States a lot of the time because of the time difference, and depending on which coast or whatever people are on. It's like, "Well, I guess I can call somebody at four in the morning, but I'm not really at my best at that point," and stuff like that. So that's just not practical. If there are things like that, then John has to deal with that stuff on that side of the ocean. But I think it's just basically what we do naturally. So it's not really a laid-out schedule or something. It's like I make songs, and we go from there.

LP: Very much like the work at the individual song level, it sounds like whatever's in service of the moment, like whoever's best capable or has the best idea of what's needed in the moment.

Paul Chastain: Yeah, I think so. I guess that's the way we do it. Maybe that's not quite as efficient.

LP: You alluded to this earlier at the beginning of our chat, this notion of the expansiveness of existing outside of strict genre definitions. Given that you haven't really been in songwriting mode yet, maybe you're not ready to answer this, but on this record, it seems like there are some different textures and sounds, whether it's some keyboards or synthesis. I'm wondering, do you have a musical notion of like, "Okay, the next evolution is going to involve, you know, I'm going to go buy a theremin or a whatever." (laughter) Is there an avenue?

Paul Chastain: I don't really think I work like that. And there are a bunch of synthesizers and things on this record, but all that stuff is like spur of the moment. It wasn't really like a plan. It's just like when I was working on a song, that song, "N. Main Blues," has a big synthesizer thing in it. I was doing a—I played like a Wurlitzer sound on that, but it was a sample, sample thing, and it was MIDI, recorded in MIDI. And so I thought, "Yeah, that's cool, but maybe I need some other weirder sounds."

And I recently got some plug-in synthesizers. Most of them are vintage ones that I knew of, and maybe some of them I'd used before in the old days. But there was one crazy giant Yamaha synth, and I didn't really know what it was. I just put it on the track, which was the MIDI track, which was the Wurlitzer keyboard, but the synthesizer's setting was more like a random thing, like sample and hold.

It's supposed to read the piano notes I played, right? The MIDI information. But when it did that, it went—it sounded nothing like those notes and anything, and it just started going off. And I was wearing headphones and going, "That is cool."

And so then there you go. So then I thought, "This has to be in that song." So that's how I came about. It wasn't like a big plan to use it, just like it happened. I was looking for something to go in, but I didn't know what I was looking for. So I just happened to happen across that. And then 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 it's a piano piece or anything really with one preset, one sound, in MIDI or to lay down the track and then overlay a different plugin on it or a different sample instrument on it. And to hear, "Wow, that has nothing to do with what it sounded like when it was a straight piano."

Paul Chastain: I wasn't even—I was just trying it, but that was simple, so I could hear what it would do. And I didn't have any other track recorded, and I didn't want to hook up a thing. So, I had already had that recorded. So I just use—"I'll just use this and see what these sounds sound like." And I thought, "Oh, it's going to be like strings, fake strings or whatever." And then just the stock sound and have—I punched a button. A preset, and it was on this crazy sample and hold thing. It was almost like a Moog modular version of what Yamaha had made, but everything, instead of cables, was all connected together internally. However, you still had to go from the amp to the filter, just like an old synthesizer.

So it was something like that. It was something like that. And the thing just—I wasn't ready for what it would sound like to play the notes of the chords I'd played. It's just some chords, you know. And it was like, (imitates synth sounds) "beep, beep, beep, beep," and it was going like all over the place. And it was like panning and stereo. I was like, "Oh, I gotta use this." So basically, that's how I—maybe I just sort of write songs, and then it's at the moment.

I think, "Oh, I want to finish this one. I feel like this is cool." I normally don't have a plan about it. Like, "I'm going to use these kinds of sounds." I just usually sort of let the song decide more. I would like to focus on it more, but I don't seem to work like that.

LP: So if we call this an album cycle, where are you? Are there more live dates planned? What parts of the world do you think you'll be able to hit? Where are you at in terms of this record?

Paul Chastain: I don't know. We're near the end of phase one of the promotion cycle, and I don't know if we'll be able to do dates or not. I'm actually in the middle of doing some dates with Matthew Sweet on the road. I just did some, and then I'm going to head out at the beginning of April and do some more with him because he hasn't been out for five years. And we're just getting that going again. So I'm going to be out, but not with this band.

What I am trying to do, though, is my idea to have some other artist and producer friends do remixes of maybe a couple of the songs on Ours and Others. So, to that end, the first one, which I think is almost done, is our friend, Jeff Murphy from Shoes, who is remixing the song they are on, and I asked him if he could remix it. So he's working on that for me. And I want to—I'm thinking of releasing those as singles that aren't on the record but refer back to the record.

And then I'd like to get someone else to do another one or two if I can afford to do that. And if that all works out, that's my idea of what I want to do. And I don't know if we will do any live supporting stuff now. I just don't know. I'd like to, but I don't know. It's a question mark right now.

LP: The remix idea, I guess, allows you to have another moment to put out and talk about without having to be on the road.

Paul Chastain: I just thought maybe it'd be a way to get more life out of the record, and also, I think it would be cool. I just thought it'd be cool to have somebody do it because I mix all the songs on the record, which I like to do, and that's fun. I thought getting somebody else's take on it would be cool. Also, we can advertise that this person is on the, on this doing this, and then it helps to get other people, whose fans may not be aware, to check it out. But it's kind of selfish just because I want to hear what they would do for somebody else. I'd love to get like a, you know, I'd like to do one for each song. It'd be really cool. But maybe if I could do two to three, that'd probably be all we could do.

LP: I would say it sounds like you're getting a fine handle on this promotion thing, getting some of the other artists involved.

Paul Chastain: I just need to be able to pay for it, just need 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, who 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 version comes out. I'll see if I can work that out. Because now, and that's very selfish. I just like that. I wanted to work with Mitch again sometime, and this is how I can do it; I wouldn't be there, but I'd still have his involvement in a song. That would be meaningful to me.

LP: I was thinking that maybe go to some of the artists whose work you had to turn down in the mix because it didn't work at the last minute and see what they do with it. Well, maybe we'll just push the faders up on these tracks. (laughter)

Paul Chastain: They might be mad about that. I think they would be okay with it, though. I think they're guys that do a lot of session stuff. And, but yeah, I mean, I always feel bad about that, actually, to be honest, because everyone that plays on our record didn't get paid. They just played; we asked them to do it because they were there, or we invited them to be included in the creative process. And there, they're graciously contributing their time and ideas. It's all a very friendly kind of thing. So, I always feel extra bad if I don't use someone's part that they worked on. At some point, I just have to make the call. So, I apologize to anyone. There are only a couple of instances of it, I think.

LP: Regardless of any of those difficult decisions you had to make, both records are just beautiful slices of great songwriting and production. This is one listener who says all those decisions were very effective.

Paul Chastain: Oh, thank you. That was very kind of you. Thank you. It means a lot.

LP: Thank you for making time, Paul, especially so early in your day there, and hopefully, I didn't intrude on your songwriting time.

Paul Chastain: No, no, you probably intruded on my tax preparation time that I have to figure out in the next few days.

LP: I've been putting that off, too. I was supposed to do it today. I blocked out some time on Wednesday because I didn't want to do it tomorrow.

Paul Chastain: I hate it. I know I got to get into it. I've done half of it, but I don't like it.

LP: It's the worst, man.

Paul Chastain: Yeah. It's the worst.

LP: It's like, "So what bad news is waiting for me?" (laughter)

Paul Chastain: It's just like, it takes so much effort, and it's like, I can tell you what it will be without going through all the motions.

LP: Good luck with that, sir.

Paul Chastain: Yeah. Same to you.