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Interview with Calla
Interviewed By: DaVe Lipp
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Calla and their music have been described as many things; dark, depressing, and melancholic are just a few of them. Whatever you think of Calla and band members Aurelio Valle (guitar, vocals), Peter Gannon (bass, guitars), and Wayne B. Magruder (drums, samples), think again, as I sit with them to find out that appearances can be deceiving. |
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To meet them, I called Aurelio by phone and was told to wait on a street corner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn at 5pm and to call him so they can meet me in a nearby bar that had a pool table in the back. When I got to the bar, I sat and waited for them. No one else was there. After 15 minutes, I got a call from Aurelio. “Are you here yet? We’re in the back by the pool table.” Being that I was the only person in this bar, I knew something was wrong. “I’m the only person here. Which bar are you guys in?” I asked. “We’re in a place called “BAR.” It’s the one with the word “BAR” in neon. Oops, wrong bar! After I finally met them at the right place, the shroud of mystery surrounding them and our meeting place for this interview was unveiled as Calla turned out to be a bunch of nice guys ready to talk about their new fifth album Strength In Numbers, and I was ready to share drinks and listen.
The new album seems to draw from your previous albums sounds. Tell me about how you put Strength in Numbers together?
Wayne B. Magruder (WM): This album was different from the last album Collisions. With that album, we went into a studio for a month and wrote some of the songs there and just recorded everything and mixed it down all at once. With Strength In Numbers, we recorded it the way we’ve always done our albums before that. We usually go in, record a little bit, then take a break, work on stuff some more, then come back maybe two weeks or a month later and record some more. So there was a lot of time in between takes. We recorded several things over and over again, in different ways. So on this one we had a lot more time to think about it. So it’s not like Collisions, where we went in and recorded everything and that’s it.
Aurelio Valle (AV): We also did a lot of recording at home, and integrated that into the final mix. We recorded it at several different studios too. One in Brooklyn, one in Manhattan, one in Greece, and one in Austin [Texas]. So it was kind of all over the place, but I think we work best that way, having time to do our own thing. Being in a studio is kind of constricting. You always have that ticker. How much is this costing us a day? You feel forced to try to come up with something.
I read that you wrote and recorded some of this album on the road.
AV: This time around, we wanted to follow up Collisions pretty fast. We had to record and work while we were on tour and at home and abroad in order to get the record out when we wanted to. It was inspiring to have the time to do it while we were on tour, to just kind of step back from playing shows every single day. We were doing a festival tour and had time in between so we would just write.
Is it something that you normally do or is it new?
WM: We just always do that. Like earlier records and stuff.
Peter Gannon (PG): Not as much focus though. This time I think we really tried to write stuff in that spare time. That extra day or two that we had in between shows, we really tried to make use of that time. So there was more of an effort I would say this time than in the past.
Did the current political events play a role in making Strength In Numbers? The title makes me think of what’s going on right now.
AV: Yeah, I think there are many meanings to the title. I think that it wasn’t written with that in mind but the fact that there’s several ways to interpret it kind of makes it interesting. The main title was taken from the song “Rise,” which stood out to all of us. It summed up the whole record because Strength In Numbers was mainly meant to describe a personal situation where you feel a security amongst a group, whether it’s in a group of people, friends, a family, a gang, or whatever.
What songs on Strength In Numbers have the most meaning to you?
AV: That’s a hard question. There’s a lot of them that are really personal. I write all of the words, so I find that the songs really affect me the most. It’s hard to say. “Defenses Down” is very personal. I can’t even think of the names of the songs right now! “Sleep in Splendor” is a personal song written about a passing in the family. It was something hard for me to write. I think it was the last song that I finished actually, out of all the songs I had. I was able to write everything in time for the recording. But for this, I held off until the very last minute. I wasn’t sure how to say what I wanted to say because it was kind if tough. But when I finally said it, I felt a huge relief that I was able to do it.
Are you happy with the finished product or is there anything you would change or even add to it?
PG: There’s things that you can always change. But the final product of any album is pretty much a compromise and if you left it up to the artist, you would continuously change things and tweak it.
Yeah, you’re your own worst critic.
WM: The fact that a label will give you a time limit and say this is when it needs to be turned in kind of forces you to settle. It’s true that under pressure, you can come up with really interesting stuff.
Since your debut album, your songs seem to have picked up in pace. Especially from Collisions onward, your songs have gotten faster and harder. Was it a natural progression or did you all decide it was time for a change?
WM: It’s a progression and it’s intentional. You don’t want to keep doing the same old thing.
AV: It was definitely something that we felt was a challenge and we try to challenge ourselves with every record, otherwise, it’s just kind of predictable and boring to us.
WM: Also playing live plays a big role in all the albums because once you tour for an album, playing live makes you refocus on playing these songs live. There’s energy playing live and I think that’s why you get faster paced songs as the albums go along as well. I think that has a lot to do with it. You get a lot of reaction from a live situation.
AV: On our earlier records, up until Televise, we would record everything and write everything sporadically
PG: Not as a band really.
AV: Not as a band in a room.
So you would each just record parts?
WM: Yeah, we’d record parts together, then everybody would go in and do their different sections completely separate. So it was never consistent. Once we finished touring for whatever previous record, we’d find a new energy in the songs. The songs would have this live energy and momentum, whereas what we captured with Collisions, we thought let’s not record sporadically and let’s really try to capture what this band is about live and we were really able to pull it off. With the new album, it’s kind of like a mixture of all that stuff. For recording this album, we went back to an old way of recording. It’s a mixture of a live thing, then each of us going back in the studio and doing our own thing, and then coming back and integrating things back in. It’s like cutting and pasting.
AV: We started working that way because we never really had a budget to be in the studio for a month or two. We found a unique way of working and a unique sound and style from having to work that way, so we wanted to incorporate every single thing that we’ve ever done on every record into one record. That was our intention.
When I first listened to Strength In Numbers, it totally reminded me of all your previous albums.
AV: That’s the thing, to be able to listen to it and hear all the elements of what we do and for someone to know our back catalog, to be able to listen to the album and say this sounds like something off the first record or off of Televise, that’s cool.
What was the purpose of doing that as opposed to taking it in some avant-garde other direction?
AV: When we did Collisions, many people felt like it was a departure. A lot of people were saying that it was a huge departure from anything we had done previously. We were like, no, it’s a Calla record and it is a progression. If you listen to the first record, second record, third record, and fourth record, you’ll see that there’s a progression there. When people think Televise is our first record, they don’t understand what we’re doing here. So to listen to them and to know the records in order, everything falls into place and everything makes perfect sense. We felt it was the next step.
PG: It ended up being that way because it was something we all wanted to do. We wanted to get back to some of the other stuff we were experimenting with.
WM: We were missing a lot of those elements.
PG: We wanted to keep the song structures and the vocals up front and work on song craft as well.
WM: Playing Collisions live was like, okay, well we’ve done this in the studio already. Where do we take it from here? We were missing a lot of the old elements, like the samples and things to play with.
I remember hearing your album Scavengers for the first time. It sounded moody, experimental and twangy. Texas popped into my mind before I even read that you began there. Do you think that your music is a product of where you grew up?
WM: Yeah, that and where we live now and where we’ve been you know? I think it always is even if it’s a reaction against it. You’re environment is always going to shape you somehow whether you know it or not.
AV: Regardless of what kind of artist you are, I think that you’re environment is definitely going to affect your work, whatever that is. When we were playing early on in our old band The Factory Press, being from Texas, we were always trying to inject that kind of style, sound, whatever you want to call it, but we were very aware that we were playing music very influenced by British bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain. Bands from the UK were very inspiring to us like The Smiths and stuff like that, but to try to incorporate that and make it our own, being from Texas, you know, it was just kind of something where we’d sit there and listen to something like Spaghetti Westerns and try to inject that into what we were doing.
How did you guys develop such a distinct sound? As soon as your songs come on I’m like that’s Calla.
AV: That’s a huge compliment coming from people who know who we are.
WM: For me, I set little limits on what I will and won’t do as far as sounds go.
AV: At the same time, challenging what it is that you do. It’s like keeping that signature sound but doing something different.
WM: There’s certain sounds I won’t use as far as textures and stuff. There’s certain places I won’t go. But it’s for aesthetics sake. Every band kind of has that. It was an intentional thing but it was also an unintentional thing. A big reason is because you don’t want to sound like another band. So it’s just us bouncing off each other and when someone starts sounding too much like so and so, you can be like let’s not do that because it’s been done and we want to do something different. I think that had a lot to do with it. There was a lot of bouncing ideas off each other.
AV: It’s interesting to kind of look back and listen to the records and know what your parts were inspired by but also to have this kind of overall interesting body of music that just stands out from everything else in a certain sense. I think that was our intention from the beginning. When we originally put the band together, we were like, let’s do something that no one else is doing. Let’s try to do something that has music that we would want to hear or we would want to buy.
Aside from your last two albums, the rest have been on different labels. Has it been tough to find a label to support your music or is it due to the constant shift in the record industry or something else?
PG: Who knows?
WM: I think with every label we wanted to step it up a little bit. We started on a small label then we wanted to get a little bit bigger, then we went to Young God [Records]. It’s all a progression up.
AV: With the previous labels, we’d just get to a point where we felt we were being limited to what we can do. Most of the time we just felt that the budget wasn’t there, maybe the press wasn’t there, maybe the tour support wasn’t there. There was always something keeping us from going to the next level.
PG: Timing, providence, or some sort of weird X factor.
AV: Yeah, like an evil curse that maybe someone put on us.
WM: For us, as far as careers and stuff, it’s a two sided coin. If you look at it, we’ll come to a town where a young kid has a band and thinks Calla has it made, but we have our own set of aggravations and frustrations. But if you were to go back and ask us all at 18, we would have accomplished every single goal we set out to do. First of all, it’s never enough no matter what you do. If you’re an artist in any way, shape, or form you will always be striving for more. It’s nice to push yourself but at the same time it can always be frustrating no matter how much you have. Also, inside looking out, your situation and where you’re at can be pretty grim sometimes but outside looking in, from the kid who lives in Glasgow or Ireland or Mexico, it’s nice to know that there are people out there that appreciate what we do. In the end, it makes you feel like you really left a mark and did what you set out to do. Now, it’s just a matter of sustaining that as a career.
PG: I think the idea is just to keep creating. We’ve had the opportunity to make five records and we’d like to make more.
How do you deal with all the record industry bullshit?
PG: It will make you miserable and give you an ulcer.
WM: You do what you need to do and you wonder why people ask us why we’re such a depressing band.
I read a couple of interviews about that, how Calla is depressing music. The first time I heard your music, I didn’t get it because it’s not depressing. It reminds me more of Ennio Morricone, it’s more mysterious and chill than depressing.
AV: Obviously, we’re not like Goth kids, moping around, saying we wish we were dead or anything. That’s not the case at all. In fact, I think that a lot of our music is very inspiring. When you listen to it and you hear elements of, like you said, Ennio Morricone, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Portishead, or Massive Attack, whatever it is that you hear in there, it’s an inspiration for us and it’s something that we’re doing because we enjoy doing it. I feel like there’s a lot of hope in the words and some of the critics that listen to our stuff and review it give it more than one listen before they start talking shit about it because maybe they’re fans and they know our past. But many people think that this is our sophomore record and some people think that Televise was our first record, because it’s the first record they could get in America at a normal record store. They just reissued our first record. It was hard to get in America before they reissued it. No one knows that record exists.
You guys really utilize silence very well.
AV: Yeah, definitely. Silence is a virtue. It’s nice to be able to bring it down. Listening to bands like Talk Talk, gosh, even listening to soundtracks like David Lynch, there’s certain elements to a song, where if you’re able to bring it to a point where you can fill the room, like the Cowboy Junkies do on the Trinity Sessions, you listen to that record and it’s so quiet and so delicate. But at the same time the emotion is just so much more powerful when you can bring it down and be that sensitive with it or that subtle with it and then blow up and really take it to another level. I don’t know, there’s a lot to play with there.
With the internet giving many bands the opportunity to be seen and heard, has it helped Calla attract a broader audience?
PG: I think so. It may have detracted some album sales but at the same time, a band like us at our level gets a tremendous amount of exposure. I can’t imagine 10 years ago in such a short period of time, that you would wind up playing Portland, Oregon to close to 500 people. Live music is not going away. While selling albums and packaging music might be evolving, live music is going nowhere, so the internet does nothing but help independent bands in that aspect. We played over the summer in Moscow at a festival and there were over 25 people singing the lyrics.
AV: Well, it was in a crowd of 3,000.
PG: Well, out of them there were 25 people singing the lyrics. So that was quite an experience to go and play a festival in Moscow.
AV: To be in places we’ve never been like in Moscow or Greece and playing shows to people in these festivals, like he’s (Peter) saying, you see the whole front row of people who really don’t speak the language but they’re sitting there singing your songs. There’s definitely something to say for that.
WM: So if the industry can’t catch up with technology and how to make money at it, there’s other ways to support the artist. The artist can show up, you can buy a ticket and a t-shirt so smaller artists can tour and have their music out there.
AV: And lower the prices of CDs because they’re just too expensive.
Yeah, CDs aren’t selling anymore. Most people are buying on itunes or downloading them from other sources.
AV: If record labels had any clue, they would lower the price of CDs.
WM: By like $5.
AV: Yeah, $5, $6, even $7.
Then they wouldn’t make any money.
AV: But people would make an effort to buy them.
Who can afford a CD for like $18?
AV: I can’t. I don’t even remember the last time I bought a record and it’s very hypocritical of me to say that I want people to buy my records when I don’t even go out and buy records. I will buy a CD when it’s something that I really want to hear and that I’m really going to say, I’m going to support this artist. For you to have to say that I think it’s really kind of sad.
WM: There’s a lot of stuff you have to filter through before you find the artists you want to support. There’s so many bands and so many artists now.
I feel like with the whole internet thing, music is reverting to the 50s where they’re selling singles now, just like back in the day. People aren’t buying albums anymore.
PG: Discussions Wayne brought up and we’ve talked about before is that the record industry needs to evolve. With technology now, the industry needs to think more outside the box. Who says CDs have to come packaged anymore? We’ll see what happens but no one is willing to make the first move really.
What jobs did you all have to support yourselves before Calla became successful?
WM: I worked in a coffee bar, an architectural firm for a while, then many coffee bars.
AV: Wayne and I worked at the same coffee bar when we first moved to New York. We were the only two people working there and we traded shifts a lot. I also worked at Kim’s [Music and Video] on St. Mark’s Place for four and a half years. That was almost like school for me because I had access to so much music. I would just rent movies and buy music. That was my life for four and a half years until I got out of there. Real jobs were never in the books for me.
Your upcoming tour is quite extensive. Do you enjoy being on the road? If so, what places do you look forward to going to the most?
AV: Europe. We like touring the U.S. We like hitting the major cities and some of the smaller cities are cool too. I guess it really rather depends. The first two weeks of a tour are really exciting regardless of where you are, well, for the most part. But once you hit that month mark it starts getting rough because no matter where you are, it gets rough. It’s like, you have that hour of being on stage when you’re just enjoying yourself and people are appreciating what you’re doing. Then there’s the other 23 hours when you’re either in a hotel or on the road.
How does that work when you’re on tour? Do you actually get a chance to see the places that you’re going to?
WM: If the drive isn’t that long to get there and we have a little bit of time in the afternoon we get to wander off and check out the cities.
PG: We definitely try to see as much as possible, wherever we are.
WM: We also want to get rest and take care of ourselves too because it can be kind of rough.
Do you exercise or change your eating habits when you’re on the road?
AV: It’s hard to eat well when you’re eating at like 2am.
WM: When you’re trying to fit in a meal and you’re limiting yourself to what you actually can eat.
AV: And you try to eat well and exercise when you can. Many times, you’re living off highway food, you’re stopping at Cracker Barrel, and you’re making the best of it. It can be hard sometimes.
Is there any direction musically you haven’t gone yet that you’d like to?
AV: Yeah. I think all three of us have different answers on that and that they’re all yes. We all have the same answer with different directions.
WM: I’d like to make a hip-hop record or a dub record. That would be cool.
AV: It would be nice to collaborate.
PG: A house record [joking]
AV: We all have different interests and different fields. To have other opportunities to work on other projects, it just kind of keeps you refreshed. It’s kind of like taking a vacation from Calla that keeps you interested in Calla.
Have you ever had a Spinal Tap moment on tour?
AV: We were in Cologne, Germany doing a show. When we finished our set, we went backstage into this hallway to smoke a cigarette while waiting to do an encore. The crowd was cheering, but nobody told us that the door to get back on stage locked from the outside. When we were ready to go back and play, we couldn't open the door. We were banging on the door but no one could hear us because the crowd was cheering so loud. The only way to get out of there was to go down a staircase and several hallways, then through a side door that led outside. We then had to go around the building to the front and show the doorman our badges to prove that we were in the band to get back inside. So once we got in, the crowd was still cheering and we had to make our way through the crowd, onto the stage. Meanwhile, everyone is looking at us like "What the fuck is going on?" It was totally weird.
If you do a Google search for Calla, flowers, a designer highchair, a cat breedery, and the homepage of Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach are just a few Calla’s that come up. Where did your band name Calla come from?
PG: Cat breeding!
AV: Mainly the flower. It looked good written down. It’s not a real strong reason but it looked right and sounded right to us.
WM: It’s ambiguous. It’s not a strong word in any one direction
AV: We realized that every single country we went to, there seemed to be a different meaning for it. In Mexico I was very aware that calla (pronounced cay-a) is a silence and it seemed to fit us in some strange way. |
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