16. Good Talk #2: Scott Evans
Hello everyone!
I’ll have some big huge announcements here sometime soon (I hope) and I can’t wait to tell you about what I’ve been working on. It has been life-altering, and pushed me to the absolute limits of … just about everything.
For now, I want to continue to express my gratitude to everyone who continues to subscribe to this newsletter. I see a ton of talk online about the pitfalls of online newsletters, but the thing I don’t see a lot about is how it helps build some consistency, and something reliable, that freelancers like me can count on. Until the industry can promise more contracts for freelancers, or checks that come on time, I will be eternally grateful that this space allows an alternative outlet for people to support independent writers.
If you like this newsletter, please consider a paid subscription. Thank you!
A long time ago, I spent all of my time writing about music. It was a meager way to live, but a memorable time that changed me as a person and as a writer. One summer night, I was standing in a basement venue in Missoula, Montana watching a band from San Francisco. They were called Kowloon Walled City. I’d never heard of them before, but felt immediately like I’d discovered a band that was about to get huge. They were loud, but not thrashy. The music was artful and strange, melodic and spare.
Since then, Kowloon Walled City has received well-deserved acclaim for their work, and just last month released its first new record in six years, via Neurot Recordings, called Piecework. I’ve always loved the caustic vocals and impassioned lyrics in the band, and somewhere along the way, became friends with the guy making them: Scott Evans.
Scott’s a free agent, like me: I’m a freelance writer, he runs his own recording studio, Antisleep Audio, in Oakland. I like to talk about writing with people who work in other mediums than I do, so that’s what this Good Talk is about: two writers from very different worlds talking about writing.
We jumped on a call to compare freelance problems, and the barriers to creating art, and the reason to keep making things in dark times.
Leah Sottile:
Tell me about leaving your day job to do more recording - let’s start there.
Scott Evans:
For almost my entire adult life, I have had this back and forth between what felt like a pipe dream of recording music as a job and having a super solid career as a software developer. I got into programming when it was something you did because you liked it – before startups and the Internet and the gold rush for tech, it was a nerd hobby. And I've always been pragmatic: you need to be able to pay your rent. You should make safe bets. And honestly, when I was younger, I was mostly recording friends anwyay so that was probably smart.
When we moved to the Bay Area and this band started, I started meeting more good bands, so I was able to do more recording. Slowly, over time, it picked up. But we had two kids, we owned a house. It felt like it was too late, I had already made my decisions. But as time went on, I was doing more and more recording work and it got harder and harder to do both things at once. One of the things people say about trying to record full time, which is probably true of any freelance career, is don’t quit your day job until you have to.
Finally I realized, I’m not getting any younger. I look at the calendar and I get heart palpitations, juggling family and work and work trips and recording and band stuff. So I had one of 500 talks with Bradee, my wife, where I was like... how many times we had this conversation? Can I do this? And she said okay. I'm pretty sure she'd said that before too. But I'm not a risk taker. If I was finally ready to do it, it was a big deal.
LS:
I feel like maybe I sensed that in you the first time we met, that you were not a risk taker. Because I don't think of myself as much of a risk taker. Did being freelance make you more anxious or was it like, ‘holy shit, I'm doing what I've always wanted to do.’
SE:
It didn't make me more anxious. My wife and I came to this decision to make me less anxious. I mean, doing all of that stuff — trying to be a good dad and a good husband, trying to be a good employee on a team that I respect in my day job and trying to do right by music clients — it's a lot. So yeah, I try to do my best to remember, this is my job now. It's not like I'm fitting this in between my other responsibilities. I do think a lot of anxiety freelancing is the feast or famine part. I haven't been at this long enough to live that, aside from COVID.
LS:
I want to talk about Piecework. Part of my reason for doing so is I want to talk about your approach to writing lyrics. I saw you recently mentioned that part of the story behind it involves your grandmother — will you tell that story?
SE:
A bunch of the songs that I've written in the past for this band were about my dad or his dad. Both of them are very important to me. I miss them both a lot. I think about them all the time. But I wanted to try and write about my mom and her mom, and my dad's mom, who were all amazing people who lived different lives than their partners. My mom's mom, and my mom, grew up super poor in Kentucky. They didn't have running water in their house growing up. They had an outhouse, and they had to heat wellwater to do laundry. Her mom raised four kids that way.
Eventually [my grandmother] ended up working for a shirt company in Kentucky. She sewed shirt collars for, I don't know, 20 or 30 years. Part of this is me filling in blanks — talking to my mom or talking to her sister. She basically sat at a sewing machine, sewing collars, for decades. It was piecework, which means it's paid by the piece that you complete. So if you had a bad day or if your kid was sick or you’re getting older and your arthritis hurts — it means you make less money that day.
So my grandmother's definitely in that song. There are also references to "The Song of the Shirt" by Thomas Hood, which I came across in Zinn’s A People's History of the United States. That's a good representation of how most of these songs came together — blurry stories of people I know, interwoven with other, better writing, then embellished or changed as it made sense. Which I learned about thanks to The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo. That book definitely helped my songwriting.
LS:
That’s interesting. I didn't realize that there was so much familial inspiration in your songwriting. Did you find it more of a challenge to be writing about the female side of your family?
SE:
No, I don't think I was writing from a different voice or a different perspective. I was just writing about a slightly different thing. I mean, I honestly feel like I've written the same three songs for 20 years. So this is just a slightly different take on writing the same song again.
LS:
Why? I mean, a Kowloon Walled City song sounds like a Kowloon Walled City song. But I do think that this album does feel different in ways than the others.
SE:
When Container Ships came out, I remember doing a few interviews where people would ask me questions like “this is a huge departure — how did you decide to do that?" And I was just baffled. I was like, we did all the same stuff. We were in the same room. We're holding the same guitars, plugged into the same amps. We had a new person in the band, Jon. But Jon didn't join the band to revolutionize it or anything like that. The best I can say is, I think it's one of those things like where if you look at a picture of yourself from 10 years ago, you realize, “oh, holy shit. I look very different.” But you don't realize the day-to-day.
So to me, does this new record feels super different than the previous one? I don't think so. All I see are the consistencies. Every record that we've written, we have sort of started out by saying what are we trying to fix or change? What are the rules? With Container Ships, we were trying to add some more space. And there's a list of things that we were trying to change for this record. Though it’s funny I would say “there’s a list of things we were trying to change, but I don’t see how it came out any different.”
LS:
[laughs] I mean, you have to keep yourself interested in it, right?
SE:
I am totally content to do the same thing over and over again. I saw an interview with Nigel Godrich, who has done all the Radiohead records and is an incredible producer. He's one of the best producers alive, I would say. And he mentioned in passing, something like, ‘I can't imagine doing a band at this point that's just a rock band with guitars and drums. It sounds absolutely dreary.’ And I thought, huh. I could eat a peanut butter and jelly every day for the rest of my life. I'm happy to branch out and do weirder and more interesting things too, but I still like a good rock band. I don't need to keep myself interested. I may be underselling it a little bit. We all agree that playing these songs feels different.
LS:
But none of you can kind of put a finger on why.
SE:
I've seen a lot of people talk about negative space and all that. Which I get. But to me it feels like we're playing more. I feel like an actual guitar player for once. I don't know. Maybe we just fit everything together in a tighter way.
LS:
What was the band born out of? When you came together to make Kowloon Walled City, what was the creative brief?
SE:
When I moved to the Bay Area, we had one very young kid, and I had a new job. After a year or so, I started looking for a band. This was when Craigslist was the way you did that. The Bay Area Craigslist, being the home of Craigslist, was crazy busy. Every musician in the Bay Area was on there looking for bands. Jeff [Fagundes] and I met that way. Long story short, eventually Jason [Pace] and Ian [Miller] joined up with us. And I was kind of driving the kind of mission statement of the band. It was basically: Shallow North Dakota, Unsane and Godflesh. Simple, repetitive, unadorned, mid tempo, heavy. I can't stress the unadorned part enough. And like, never change. You put this on, you know what you're getting. That was the idea.
LS:
Is it still?
SE:
Yes and no. At this point I can safely say that musically, most anything that we do, we're just referencing ourselves rather than having overt influences. But as for never changing... every record sounds pretty fucking consistent. That is one hundred percent fine by me.
LS:
From what I’ve read in other interviews, it sounds like a lot of Piecework was finished in 2018, and then there was a huge barrier to getting the vocals finished. It seems like you're a reluctant vocalist.
SE:
I hate it. I hate being the singer. I hate being the person who writes the lyrics. I hate it. Yeah.
LS:
Why do you do it then?
SE:
We couldn't find anyone else.
LS:
Would you get someone else to do it now, if you could? Or is it your cross to bear?
SE:
It's pretty much the cross I bear. We did audition singers when we were starting the band. We had a couple of people come by and — maybe this speaks to my control issues or some specific idea that I was shooting for — but each time it was just like, ‘man, this ain't it’.
LS:
Like, you’ve gotta do it yourself if you want it the way you want it.
SE:
Pretty much.
Usually as we're writing songs, sometime not too far after the music is glued together, I'll come up with vocals and we'll start adding them in at practice. We record every practice, so you can listen back later and figure out what's working and what isn't. Then we just tweak week after week. Once vocals are in it's often, ‘this verse goes on too long, let’s cut it here.’ … Or you know, we need to rethink the way this section is teed up. That kind of stuff. That was not happening this time.
LS:
What was going on?
SE:
It was a mixture of things. I was very busy as a parent. I was very busy as a recording engineer. And... I was a hundred percent out of shit to say. I don't think I've ever really felt like I had that much to say, but with the political and online climate, I was more aware than ever how uninteresting my perspective is.
We had a lot of discussions about this. Like, should we keep doing this? How much space do you want to occupy? How do you make room for people who should be occupying space? I remember having this conversation with a friend where I was explaining this. He’s a really thoughtful, progressive person. I was like, ‘maybe we should just quit?’ And he was like, ‘oh [laughs] I don't know about all that.’ Then his wife overheard us and she was like, ‘are you talking about stopping a band to leave more space for women in bands? I'm all for it.’ I looked at him and I was like, ‘see?’
LS:
That is so interesting. I guess I never would've thought of a band thinking ‘maybe our existence is just crowding out someone else.’ So where did you land?
SE:
Basically, with some therapy and anti-anxiety meds, and catching up on sleep for a couple of months, I was able to at least get my feet under me and start working. You know, ‘well, let's see how it comes out.’ I got off Twitter too. For my mental health. I'm pretty earnest and I take a lot of things to heart, and it was too much of a fire hose of awful. It fucked me up.
Anyway, I still can't defend not quitting music. I don't think lyrically I'm doing any harm, but I don't know that I'm doing any good either. I don't even know if that matters. I understand this is taking yourself pretty seriously. It's not like we're a band that millions of people will hear. But I will say that I really, really, really love making things with my friends. It's my favorite thing in the world.
For me, that is absolutely one of the things that keeps me alive. I don't know if me being alive is important either, but while I am, making things is really meaningful to me. It’s my favorite thing to do with my kids. It's my favorite thing to do with my wife. I just love making stuff.
The other thing I realized is that the blank page is the enemy. There was a lot of time there where I was waiting for THE idea for a song. … Inevitably if I just sit down and start puking out words, in sort of sentence, essay form, something comes from that. You need things to start with to edit… So a lot of it was just getting moving and that is an uncomfortable place for me to be. I can always find something else I would rather do.
LS:
I will do laundry that doesn't need to be done in order to avoid writing. What do you think was keeping you from even trying?
SE:
It was slow, grueling, hard work. I never wanted to do it. And there were always things that I should have been doing instead. This is not my job. I had a bunch of things that were my job all the time that I should have been doing. So that's part of it. And the other part of it was literally just like, I got nothing I want to say.
LS:
Now that it's out though. Do you feel like you came through something and learned something about the reason to continue making art?
SE:
It’s really precious to me to get to do these things with people I love. More and more as I've gotten older, I've realized just how dear that is to me.
LS:
Art keeps a person alive.
SE:
I guess it does. I've never really been able to say to myself that I'm a creative person, or I'm an artist. I would never let myself say that for whatever reason. I don't identify as those things. But making stuff definitely feeds my brain and my soul and keeps me stable. So yeah, personally, there are good reasons to keep making music. Whether or not we should be releasing this stuff to the world? I don't know.
LS:
The word ‘should’ is something that I have tried to remove from my vocabulary, because I'm a similar person. That word stops me from doing a lot of things.
SE:
What's an example?
LS:
I could say I should work on this story I need to get done to in order to make money, even though it's a mental death for me. Or I could go make some art that actually makes me feel really happy. There's a bit of a choice there: what’s your priority?
SE:
How did I use should again? Should we be releasing music to the world? It's probably good to ask. Should we be whatever it is we're doing?
LS:
But it's funny to me because it's not like Kowloon Walled City is like Gwar or something. Like, should Gwar do this? Is there a need for Gwar? Your band is heady, arty, introspective, quiet.
SE:
Do you know the expression: ‘God give me the confidence of a mediocre white male?’
LS:
HA! Yes.
SE:
That’s me, you know? I spent the last decade really realizing that. And I've spent however long deprogramming myself from lots of environmental stuff that I grew up with, and learning to see a bigger world and my tiny, tiny, tiny place in it. … For example I've considered myself a feminist for decades, but learning what that really means, and the deep, subtle ways that you don't know you're behaving that are counter to that... anyway, I guess the point is, who needs another old beardo dude yelling.
[...]
I grew up as more of a fan who played in ambitionless bands with his friends. One of my regrets, definitely, in my twenties is that I didn't land in a punk or a hardcore scene, and I didn't tour and play with more bands. That would have been enormously good for me.
LS:
Were you the kind of kid who didn’t do things like quit your job and go on tour because you were concerned with doing what you were “supposed” to do?
SE:
I don't even think I thought about it. It didn't seem realistic. Going on tour seemed like something other people did. I graduated from high school, I went to college, I got a job.
It's easy to feel bad about choosing safe paths. But on the other hand, I've been able to pay my rent my whole life. I've had health care. Those things are a big deal and they're a bigger deal as you get older. There's no simple answer. It's a first world problem, but I've always resented having to choose one over the other. And I've resented that friends of mine have to live hand to mouth, even though they're absolutely brilliant artists.
LS:
I noticed a couple of the songs on Piecework you make a mention of plans. Plans that went awry, dashed plans, failed plans. … That felt very like you to be like singing about plans. What did you learn about making plans in the process of making this record?
SE:
One thing that shows up over and over in our songs is the idea of getting older. Not just me getting older, but watching your parents get older, watching their parents get older, watching friends get older. "Life is what happens while you're making plans", I guess, is the trite summary. But I think all of that comes down to resignation as far as getting older goes. I think I've gotten better over time. Parenthood has helped me at trying to really loosen my grip on my own plans and not make them solely about me. Understand that the destination that you had in mind — you may never get there.
That's been great for the music writing process — to be completely content with leaving a whole bunch of bodies on the road on the way. You may have loved this section of a song. It may be the best part to you. But if it doesn't work in the song, that's okay. It’s fine. That kind of like looser grip on plans, I think has been probably pretty healthy for me.
LS:
There's a lot for me to learn in that space.
SE:
I’m wound pretty tight.
LS:
Fuck, dude. Same. It's my worst quality.
SE:
I'm going to interview you back. How does that square with deciding to be freelance?
LS:
It's similar to you. I was like 32 and I'd worked at a couple of papers, but I was sort of stuck at a place where there was only one path. You could become an editor. And I did that and I didn't like it. So I quit. I knew there’s never a good time for this. I just remember saying to Joe, I was like, ‘this is a terrible idea, but I think I have to go freelance now, or I'm only gonna convince myself more and more that it's a bad idea.’ And he was like, ‘I believe in what you do and I believe that you can do it.’ So I went for it and I had no plan. It was like a brute force. Like, I have to make this work or I will starve.
SE:
I was also curious if you have similar blank page problems.
LS:
Yeah. I don't know how you are with your writing process, but I can't start writing a story until I write the first line.
SE:
Yes! I don't need the first line to start, for me it's more like – when I finally get a good first line, then I know the patient is going to make it. Anyway that is heartening to hear. You need clay.
LS:
In the past I have done NaNoWriMo, and I’ve done it at alongside two brilliant fiction writer friends of mine. Just knowing that they were working on their projects at the exact same time and they were going to expect me to report back to them, that was kind of what I needed.
I want to ask you about how books influence what you write. I know you have such a wide variety of literature that you read. How much do you feel like that influenced the lyrics?
SE:
Oh there's lots of references to that stuff. Songs too. I am really not a great lyricist. I'm pretty good at repurposing or reframing. I'm the first to say our songs have lots of not-my-original thoughts. I'm not trying to front that I came up with all this stuff. There are lots of little phrases or ideas that I refer to. On this record, some of those ideas and words are like glue. A few of them are part of the foundation of the song. … This record is like 600 words total.
LS:
It’s like poetry, and poetry is distillation. The purest form of a thought.
SE:
Yeah, making words work in that tiny little bite is its own thing. I took a couple of poetry writing classes when I was in college and it was really clear that I was way out of my lane. I was an engineering student who was trying to challenge myself and learn some things. I did learn some things but it mostly reinforced like, ‘oh man, I don't belong here.’
To really be good at this stuff. You need to practice all the time, just like anything else. And I don't do that.
LS:
Do you think you will now that this last one was so hard?
SE:
Ideally I would. But ideally I would run five miles every day too.