Clem Snide

Greg Locke: How important is humor to you when writing a song? Eef Barzelay: It’s important, you know, but there’s a time and place for it. I’m not trying to be too joke-y necessarily, but I’ve always liked to mix it up within a song. A song can be really sad and still have humor in it as well.

GL: I’m a big fan of David Byrne and know people who are fans of Jimmy Buffet’s early stuff; those are guys who have always injected humor into their writing without ever really getting - at least as far lyrics are concerned - a whole lot of respect. But then there are guys like Jonathan Richman, Daniel Johnston, Randy Newman and Ben Folds who have great reviews oozing from their pores. Those guys use just as much humor in their writing styles as anyone. Then there’s you, who write these real songs that have humor in them - songs that still manage to make me laugh after hearing them dozens of times. I figure you’re the guy to ask this question: What’s the difference here?

EB: [Laughs]

GL: You’re the scientist here, Eef, what is the difference between a Byrne and a Newman?

EB: Do you mean the difference between … well, that’s just God’s cruel hand at work there. I don’t know, I think with someone like Ben Folds, who I’ve toured with a lot and know the world of pretty well, someone like him or Randy Newman, well, their music is just really generous - certainly Ben Folds. My humor is a little more snotty towards the audience. I’m trying to kind of fuck with people more than him, but in a tender sort of way. Ben does that to an extent too, but he has a way of really welcoming his audience. Someone like Loudon Wainwright, because of his deep self-loathing, he alienates the audience. It’s hard to put one or the other into a separate category. There are a lot of mysterious forces at play here, I mean we’d have involve Economists and Historians to really get the full picture. I guess I don’t know. I’ve tried to understand it from my own point of view. I’ve seen angry reactions to my music. I have a couple of Ben Folds fans right now who, after this last tour, became really upset following my opening set. They just took great offense, you know. Maybe it wasn’t one of my better shows, but some people just get so offended. And I think that’s cool, because I do hope to offend some people. I think some people desperately need to be offended, so I try to do that in my own delightful way.

GL: Well in response to those irritated fans, you played my hometown of Fort Wayne with Ben Folds back in 2001 while you guys were on tour and I know people who still speak fondly of your set. I went to see Clem Snide - who I was a bigger fan of at that moment - but most of the people I knew went to see Ben. You came out there and I don’t think a lot of people really knew your songs yet. You played “Mike Kalinsky,” which wasn’t released yet at that point, but it was the moment everyone I knew was talking about the next day. I saw kind of the same reaction when “Enrique” came around. As much as I love those songs - I was bummed that those were the songs that got the reactions. I just wanted to take my friends and shake ‘em and make them pay attention to all these other songs of yours … all these great songs people should know …

EB: That’s how it goes. Those kinds of songs tend to … those kind of novelty songs, for lack of a better word, tend to get people’s attention quicker, as opposed to something you have to listen to a few times and really contemplate the deeper meaning of. It’s always just kind of like spitting into the ocean; there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I don’t have any sort of agenda other than just hopefully continuing to do this - getting enough people into it that I can sustain it. Artistically I just have to trust my instincts and trust the song. When a song starts happening I just try to let it be what it wants to be, I don’t try to force it to be something else. With a song like “Mike Kalinsky,” I was just like “this is a kind of silly song,” but I do think there is some depth and sadness to it. Or a song like the “Bitter Honey” song, you know. That sort of humor grabs people, but, you know, it’s not like “Flight of the Conchords” or some shit.

GL: We could probably start up a study about humor’s place in songwriting - maybe call up Todd Snider and make him our first test subject - but I’m going to instead move on so we can start chipping away at your new album, Lose Big. I downloaded it on iTunes because it was staring me in the face, but I do plan to buy the CD when it comes out because I’m a fan of “the product.” The Ghost of Fashion and Bitter Honey both have obvious themes. Does the new album have a clear them and what in general can you tell me about the content on the new album. [Five or so minutes of stream-of-consciousness explaining follow before Barzelay says “I fucked this one up. Ask it again and I‘ll answer it again. Forget everything I said and we‘ll see what happens.”]

GL: Yeah, these aren’t really Sunday afternoon questions so far …

EB: Yeah, really. [Laughs]

GL: How’s this, just tell me about the new album in general, what’s the story behind Lose Big …

EB: I’ll give you the hard facts. Maybe that’ll make sense.

GL: Sounds good …

EB: I moved to Nashville and we started working on this Clem Snide record called Hungry Bird for a really long time. This was like ‘05, alright? The story of Clem Snide, in many ways, is a sad and tragic one. It started hemorrhaging and dying back in 2001, even. It was a slow and painful death, especially from a business standpoint. Relationships soured, managers fucked up and labels dissolved. It was tough. In the midst of all that I tried to make one glorious Clem Snide record that was going to be a magnum opus called Hungry Bird … I worked really hard on it, I wrote a ton of songs and lyrically it‘s very far reaching and vast … I don’t even know what the fuck it is, truthfully, but it is big. I was going big - aiming high, you know. In the process of making Hungry Bird I sort of destroyed the band. My relationship with Pete [Fitzpatrick], Clem Snide’s guitar player, completely broke down - for many reasons. That record is finished now. I finally went back and finished it and I hope to release it someday soon, I just have to find the best way to do it. I sent the album out to a couple industry people and they weren’t impressed - not from an industry standpoint. This is all within the context of trying to support a family, because somehow I’d fallen into this unenviable position of paying a mortgage, you know, in the indie-rock ghetto. It’s tough, man. Anyhow, Lose Big happened very quickly, right at a certain moment when I kind of realized that [Clem Snide] was over. I had an epiphany: I’d been so deep into Hungry Bird for so long - for like two years - then the bubble sort of popped, which was really liberating. So I wrote most of the songs on Lose Big, literally, in like four days. I had this four or five day stretch where I wrote one after another - it was really intense. I felt more like I was channeling people who might’ve been me in some other parallel universe or a past life. For me, Lose Big is all me, but in another person’s body, living another life - my own life felt like it’d broken into a lot of pieces, and I was looking at all the pieces. It all happened so quickly and then, amazingly enough, right at the moment that I was having this burst of creativity I had the opportunity to go into the studio with some of Ben Folds’ people, into Ben’s studio - he has this great studio in Nashville that he let me use for free. So I went in with Jared [Reynolds], the bass player for Ben, and Joe Costa and we made this album in like a week, and it came out good. My head is still spinning, and this all happened like two years ago practically. I don’t know how it all happened, really, but it came together in this glorious kind of quick way.

GL: Let me geek out for a minute and tell you that I’ve really been enjoying the new album as much as anything you’ve done since The Ghost of Fashion, which was a really huge album for me, personally. I was working in a record store when Ghost came out and we played it, like, five times a day - so I know it like the back of my hand. Anyhow, I tell my friends that if they don’t “get” the first few lines on Lose Big [“Show me the bright side and I‘ll look until my eyes catch fire / And please forgive me if I leave you feeling uninspired / My only pleasure is to make that bubble burst / I can‘t find comfort in the fact that it could be worse”] then, I don’t know, I don’t get them as a person. There’s just … I don’t know. That first verse or so is a monster. But, moving on, according to Wikipedia and now you, Clem Snide I guess is a thing of the past. I remember you saying that Clem Snide was a name to use for friends playing together. I guess I’m just confused about the dynamics of the band. With bands like Smog or the Silver Jews where it’s one guy who writes the songs and is always in the band, I just didn’t know how much Clem Snide - considering End of Love, especially - was like a Smog or Castanets. When I heard that “Clem Snide broke up” I was just confused … wondering if you’d given up al together … just wondering …

EB: Yeah, that’s a good question. Clem Snide for me was a group of friends from Boston. It all met in Boston, where we started playing together. Not professionally, just locally. I started Clem Snide in 1991, officially, then I moved to New York. The same group of dudes - group of friends - from Boston were in it up to The Ghost of Fashion, then one by one they all kind of dropped out. One guy, Jason [Glasser], got his girlfriend pregnant then moved to France, then people had various health or mental problems, or just problems that made it difficult. So it was always just kind of me trying to keep this dysfunctional group of friends together - and that’s what it was about. It wasn’t about being professional, it was about this spirit of friends. Jason was a big part of it, he was a big part of the sound. He added all those cool sounds to Your Favorite Music and produced Ghost. When he left and Pete took over as the sonic wizard it wasn’t the same. Then me and Pete went in different directions and didn’t communicate well with each other. Then, in the midst of all that, the business was a distaster: the money was fucked up; people were pissed off at the label; the manager was a fuckin’ … he revealed himself to be a complete fucking hack. So it’s hard to say. Post-Ghost of Fashion it became more me, and certainly by the End of Love - which has like 13 people on it, including three drummers - it definitely wasn’t a core band, though I did put together a core band for touring, and they became Clem Snide. I always wanted it to be a band, I like playing in a band and am not a Prince sort of guy. I like going in with the songs and letting people interpret them and put their kind of stink on it, as they used say. I’ve always encouraged it to be a band but from a practical point of view I couldn’t keep it as a band. I do own the name Clem Snide and I could’ve kept using it, but I felt like that spirit of Clem Snide was over. Every relationship sort of broke down; I don’t even really keep in touch with people from the band. There was a definitive moment where I just knew it was over. I should’ve probably kept the name, but, you know, it’s just another marketing obstacle I’ve put before me.

GL: So what about Hungry Bird, will that be an Eef Barzelay record or a Clem Snide record?

EB: I want to put it out as the last Clem Snide record - the lost Clem Snide record, which is really what it is. If I do put it out as an Eef album I won’t feel guilty because it was me who went back and finished it. I definitely sealed the deal with that record.

GL: So when you play out now do you play with a band? With Ben Folds’ guys?

EB: That’s complicated. I have an all new band that I’m using now - these local guys from Nashville who play in this band called Ole Mossy Face. They’re awesome. They’re these cool, mellow local dudes who love to play music. Then I have the drummer, Ben Martin, who was in Clem Snide. So I have two drummers. It’s feeling good. But it’s already been two years since [recording] Lose Big and I’ve been playing since then, so now I have to take it back to Lose Big.

GL: So you’re in Nashville now and you mentioned that Ben lives there. I thought he lived in Australia …

EB: He was married to an Australian woman, but they got divorced last year.

GL: A lot of my favorite songwriters seem to be moving to Nashville. I mentioned the Silver Jews earlier, who I’ve always been a fan of, and Todd Snider and Ben and you and … I don’t know, is there like a, I don’t know … do you guys see each other and duck and hide, or is that just what Nashville is like?

EB: I don’t really hang out with those guys, but I know them. I know Ben really well and we hang out sometimes. That’s the thing about Nashville, everyone here is a songwriter. It’s weird that [Silver Jews’ chieftain David] Berman and I ended up here, but it’s not like I came here thinking “it’s all songwriters, cool,” you know. That’s kind of creepy. On play dates my kid’s friends’ parents are like “I’m a songwriter!” you know. My tree guy is a songwriter. My plumber is a songwriter. I don’t know what it is, I guess there’s some sort of resonance deep beneath the soil that attracts songwriters. There’s the whole world of people who come here and try to get their songs cut by Brad Paisley or somebody, but there’s also this whole other indie world, you know. It’s cool.

GL: So are you and your family liking it there a lot more than Brooklyn?

EB: Yeah, I like it here a lot. We kind of fucked up and bought this big house we can’t afford, so that’s kind of tainting my overall Nashville experience. If I had my choice I’d go further into the country … I don’t think my wife is that keen on it, but I have real hermit, Ted Kaczynski-like tendencies where I want to live in the mountains and not see anyone for days on end. But, yes, Nashville is a cool town.

GL: I’m sure everyone asks you this, but how did the gig with Rocket Science come about and what was that scoring work like compared to your usual stuff?

EB: I just kind of stumbled into that shit. Jeff Blitz, the writer and director of the film, is a big Clem Snide fan and had been listening to a lot of Clem Snide while he was writing the script. So they contacted me just about using Clem Snide songs, also wondering if I had any Clem Snide mixes with no vocals. That didn’t quite work so it turned into me maybe just writing some instrumental music. I’d never done anything like that before, but somehow it just worked. Jeff and I e-mailed back and forth for a while, figuring out what the music should be - what he was feeling for the music. I rounded up some dudes in Nashville and went for it … and came up with some cool stuff. I really surprised myself, you know, it was a very exciting time for me because I didn’t think I could do something like that. I never had too much confidence in my musical ability. But, yeah, I came up with stuff that felt really good. I did a lot of it on Garage Band, too, which was pretty amazing. We did a lot of it in the studio but, you know, but I’m not really technically proficient. I’m kind old school and still record on a little boombox. It was really exhilarating for me. It was someone else’s responsibility to figure it all out … I did the music but it wasn’t my vision, you know, it was someone else’s vision. There’s something nice about not having to be responsible for the vision. And, also, it’s cool man because, you know, I got paid pretty well. They flew me First Class to L.A. and put me up in a nice hotel for two weeks, so I was like, shit, I can do this for sure. It’s unfortunate that the movie didn’t get too much attention when it came out … it’s just as good as Juno, I think. I don’t know why Juno stole the hearts of all of America and Rocket Science didn’t. It’s cool though, I’ll take what I can get.

GL: I definitely liked Rocket Science more than Juno. I don’t know what it is, I guess having a cute girl up front is the kicker …

EB: Yeah. That’s a whole other conversation …

GL: Yeah, you know what I mean …

EB: I just did another movie last summer that hasn’t come out yet. I don’t know what’s happening with it …

GL: What’s it called?

EB: It’s called Yellow Handkerchief. It’s got William Hurt and Maria Bello in it. It’s not a comedy, it’s more of a, um, drama, as they say. Hopefully that comes out and gets some more attention so I can get some more movie work.

GL: I wondered if your work with Rocket Science would bring on more work. I noticed the soundtrack for the movie getting regular attention … I’ve seen it on endcaps at Borders and stuff like that - which is more than I can say for the DVD of the film - so I figured they were really happy with what you did …

EB: Yeah. It’s happening … it’s happening …

GL: Your new record label is 429 Records, right? How did you end up with them?

EB: It has a lot to do with my manager. I have this manager named Ed Gerrard who has been managing Dr. John for the last 15 years. He just set up a deal for Dr. John with 429, which is a new label owned by the Savoy Group, which is owned by someone very wealthy in Japan, I’m not sure who. So I just kind of snuck my way in there. It seems like they have a good situation over there, so we’ll see …

GL: I know they just put out a record for Jackie Greene that I’m seeing everywhere, so hopefully I’ll see Lose Big everywhere.

EB: Yeah, cool. [Chomping noises.] Sorry, I’m eating.

GL: That’s fine. This is a weird questions that I don’t know how to ask. I’ll try it. People aren’t really buying CDs too often anymore, touring is getting less profitable as gas prices go up and you can’t score every movie out there … so I’m wondering, how can a small label guy like yourself keep going right now? How do you keep, I don’t know, building, I guess?

EB: Good question. I don’t know that I have an answer. It’s tough. It’s tough. I’ve been living in a financial fantasy world for the last four years. Some money comes in. I could live like a high school English teacher, I think, financially. The only way to make money is to get your song on a commercial or in a big movie - that’s the only way to get a big chunk of money at once. As far as selling records, I just don’t expect to make money from selling records. I guess I could make some money from touring. I need to get my stock value up right now. I can squeeze by, but I’m not exactly sure how. It hasn’t been pretty, but somehow I’ve managed to keep doing it.

GL: I can’t figure out how “I Love the Unknown” hasn’t become some sort of huge crossover hit yet. I guess that was maybe supposed to happen with Rocket Science. The fact that everyone doesn’t know that song and own it just seems strange to me …

EB: Yeah …

GL: Anyhow, have you ever heard anything back from Enrique Iglesias about your song “Enrique?”

EB: No. I sort of ditched that song. I never really did a real version of that song, but there’s a live version of it somewhere. That’s another song that I think is a little too joke-y. At that time I just had to get away from the really joke-y stuff because I got the feeling that people were starting to not take me seriously in a way that just wasn’t cool. So I just ditched it and haven’t thought about it in a long time. So, no, I’m not expecting Enrique to … I mean, it’s unlikely that he’s ever heard it or anyone he knows has ever heard it …

GL: I have it on a collection I bought from your website called Have a Good Night that has other stuff on it, like your version of Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia” …

EB: Yep. Put it on there for the fans. For the fans …

GL: [Laughing] So SpinArt had the rights to all your albums, right? They went out of business last year. Do they sell the rights to your albums or do you retain those right or what?

EB: Uh. Look, I don’t really talk too much shit about SpinArt …

GL: Okay, that’s okay … it’s probably a mess …

EB: Yeah. Basically they just sold my catalog to One Little Indian. It’s ugly. If I … I wish I could … I don’t know. It didn’t work out well. It all went to shit and everyone on my team revealed themselves to be a fucking asshole. It was a typical indie-rock thing, you know, “we’ll do it on handshake” and, you know, “it’s a profit split” shit. All of these sort of ideals that are based on an indie rock “we’re in it for the love of music” and “it’s not about the money” vibe. It did not work out well for me. I think in three or four years I get back the rights to all the masters, but right now I don’t even know what the hell is going on with that …

GL: Yeah, that’s just …

EB: Oh, man. It’s perfect. I read this thing, this fucked up … I probably shouldn’t tell you this …

GL: I won’t use it …

[Eef shares secrets of industry dirt while finishing his late lunch. Secrets that will remain between Eef, myself … and Eef’s sandwhich.]

EB: There are a lot of dicks in this business and I have unfortunately attracted many of them. So I’m just trying to forge ahead. Look ahead and not look behind. That’s what Lose Big is about. I lost big, you know, it all sort of fell apart and went to shit. I’m just trying to, you know, rise again. Rise big and not look back.