The Factory Press
Indie Rock / Alternative
The Factory Press relocated to New York City and recorded their final album, "The Smoky Ends of a Burnt Out Day" with Matt Verta-Ray and Kid Congo Powers producing. After the demise of The Factory Press, Valle played in various Rock-a-billy and Garage bands. In late '97, with intentions of fusing a vintage sound with modern influences, Valle formed Calla with Wayne b. Magruder and long-time collaborator Sean Donovan.
When Congo Norvell first moved to New York, these kid’s had written to me before I had even moved. I was still living in Los Angeles and I got this letter and this press kid and this EP from this band called Factory Press from Austin, TX. And they told me that they just moved to New York or were going to move to New York. They just wrote to me out of the blue and asked me if I would produce their record. And I was like, “Oh yeah. But I’m in Los Angeles. Whatever. Maybe.” And I liked it. It was kind of Joy Division-y but I saw something in it. I knew I was going to come New York so I looked in their press papers for the phone number. So I called them and I said, “I’m coming to New York and I could do this if you want to do it and I’d be happy to produce a record by you.” And they said they thought someone was doing a crank call on them because I was like, “This is Kid Congo and I’m coming and I’m going to produce your record.” So we met. Then they played me some of their new stuff and I thought it was really great. I saw so much potential in them. That record’s really good. And it was really fun to do produce a record. I’ve done some production of my own stuff and a few other things like that Sheppard Pratt record – which were another band – another call out of the blue. With them, though, I felt really good about it because I felt I was talking to someone of my own tribe or mindset about sound. And they were very open to experimenting and they were an experimental band for a rock band. And I really loved that they would really take their time getting to where they were going. I think that that’s really exciting and it’s actually not an easy thing to do. They really have that about them. So we recorded that at Matt Verta Ray’s studio and it was a really good collaboration. I got Sally Norvell to sing on it. Someone should look that album up. They made their record and they broke up – as many young bands do. But they kind of reconfigured with the core musical people. Really what they did was that their guitar player, like Kid Congo, stepped up to the microphone and became the singer and then they became a band called Calla – who I think are a really great band – all really great musicians and great guys. It’s really been exciting for me to see them go from really young pups who didn’t know what was going on to taking shape and making something really beautiful. Me and Aurelio, the guitar player, really want to work together and we have this plan to make this sort of Pharoah Sanders/Ornette Coleman-inspired guitar album, instrumental album. But we’re such lazy Mexicans that we never ever get it together to do it. I think that we’re also so very busy all of the time. One day, if we can ever get out from under our sombrero, we’ll do it.
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