Daniel Pujol On the Local

by Dave Sharp on Dec 18^th, 2010

On The Local is a routine feature of local artists perpetuating good music, thoughts, ideas and initiatives.

There’s a musical revolution in Nashville where the underground scene has extended beyond honky-tonks and the Rutledge showcases, and are centering in on rented houses that double as recording studios, a right-out-of-college rock and roll lifestyle, and a community of rockers that highlight diverse influences, slacked aesthetics and wild on-stage antics.

The home base is Infinity Cat records, led by the brothers of JEFF the Brotherhood, and which houses Heavy Cream, Natural Child, Denney and the Jets and more.

But, as the zero at the end of 2010 flips to a one, none will carry over more buzz and anticipation than Daniel Pujol – yes, the phonetic version, not “pu-hole.”  He’s expecting two full length albums in 2011 and will finish off 2010 with a holiday recording “Shopping at the End of the World.”

All of this comes on the hind-legs of his leaping Black Rabbit recording, which was his debut on Third Man Record and featured producing collaboration with Jack White.

Sinizine.net sat down with Daniel, or simply “PUJOL” to discuss the effect of middle school band on his sound and aesthetic, recording at Third Man and country music and much, much more.

Part I

“Good musicians make mistakes, but no one knows”

SZ: You’re in Tullahoma and you’re dad is an engineer at the air force base.  How did you get in to the music scene there or get in to music internally?

DP: Oh, wow.  That’s an awesome question.  I think I was initially interested in music because of band.  Yeah. I was in middle school band and I think I was more interested in drawing that music up until about middle school.  I had a husband and wife band instructor team called the Colemans.  It was funny because the man, Mr. Coleman, he did woodwinds and Mrs. Coleman did brass.  Me and everyone that I grew up with did woodwinds, so it was a very comfortable environment.  I kind of figured out I had an inclination toward it.  I got a guitar in the seventh grade and I started playing clarinet in the sixth grade.  The way that I learned how to practice and play through being in the band program, I still use that.

SZ: Your sound is a little bit of a stripped-down kind of sound.  How does that translate from a – I know its not all classical training – but, a more evolved training from band?

DP:  Certainly aspects of it were actually classical training. I did the concert band until I was in high school and then I did marching band.  Some schools have an option where you can do orchestra or marching band; but, at my school, you did marching band the first half of the year and you did concert band the other half of the year.  You didn’t get to do concert band if you didn’t do marching band.

In terms of practicing and composition, the training and the exercises that they had us do as we developed as players became just what I considered normal in terms of learning how to approach an instrument.  I approached learning guitar the same way I approached learning the clarinet.  That means things like playing slow at first, creating muscle memory.  Also, playing the woodwinds helped me – if you think about it – to sing and play at the same time.  Even doing crazy things like putting a piece of paper up against the wall and seeing how long you can hold it there by blowing on it.  It was this strange land and Mr. Coleman did concert band and Mrs. Coleman did marching band.  So, there’s this tiny woman with a trumpet on a bullhorn being like “everyone line back up and do it again or you don’t get any water!”  [Laughter]

My initial experience with music was, on one end of it very structured and ordered way of being able to become familiar with something.  And that was coupled with very regimented discipline on the band field.

[Background: "In Arizona? Shit, it was 71 and sunny!"]

I lost my train of thought…

Both of those elements from concert band and marching band helped me develop translating ideas into a recording.  The concert band helped me be able to deconstruct a song or reconstruct a song or compose a song.  The marching band was like “OK, you need to learn something perfectly, fast.”  You have to learn all these parts and learn them fast.  You need to be able to play and do the marching drill and you only have a month and a half to learn how to do it.  I think that might have engraved some kind of urgency inside my head where you have to do it fast.  Once I had been exposed to such a structured way of being able to formulate, become familiar with and manifest an idea that quickly, that not as an aesthetic thing, but more as a way to operate.  I think that approaching music through that lens would probably be the reason things sound the way they do.

Now that you have me thinking and talking on it, I didn’t realize how much this affected me.  We were doing one concert where something happened like a light went out when the we were performing with concert band and one section of the band couldn’t see the conductor.  The whole band ended up pulling out the performance, but it was kind of like “wheewww” [Daniel tugs at his collar].  Mr. Coleman said when we were done that good musicians make mistakes, but no one knows.  That’s the key to being a good musicians is that if you mess up, no one knows.  I think that statement probably is the reason why things sound the way they do.  That mentality and that message, it’s a linear method.  The same way other fine arts are linear.  Me having that kind of training, as I get older all my friends are going to school for painting or writing and they have a linear process similar to the process I was exposed to.

I quit band in the 11^th grade.  I started doing bands and shows in the 11^th grade.  Being a horn player is very demanding.  It’s a lifestyle.  It wasn’t conducive to playing shows.

I kind of took all that knowledge that I’d been exposed to through their band program and began applying that with writing and recording my own stuff.  I did a couple of bands when I was in Tullahoma and they were more performance-oriented.

SZ:  Did that that, especially that phrase in particular “Good musicians make mistakes, but nobody hears it,”  does that allow you to feel more comfortable and be more daring in what you’re putting together

DP:  Yeah, because I think that mentality humanizes the way you would view a performance.  If a god musician can mess up and make it sound intentional, then really all of the qualitative elements of a performance or a piece are called in to question about what makes it right in the first place.  Does it make it right that you played every not perfectly that was on the piece of paper or that you were able to perhaps accidentally or intentionally communicate what is on that piece of paper through improvisation or doing a variation of it.  If that’s possible, if there’s this crazy mystical human thing where you can make a mistake and don’t play the notes that are right on the piece of paper, why do people like that?

[“Santa Baby” plays over the PA]

Even this, its not perfect, but there’s something about it where you recognize who it is and its not necessarily about perfect pitch or perfect playing, its about the performances and how a performance is an opportunity to communicate.

I suppose I really have been thinking about him saying that for a really long time.  Its like home recording, which is completely conducive to that premise.  I guess all of that is a linear evolution.

Recording “just what happened”

SZ: It interesting how this really constructed or formulated view with marching orders and things like that, drives one aspect of your music.  Then, you have this deconstructed view that creates the aesthetic.  Tell me a little more about your aesthetic.  You have a garage rock vibe and raw way of putting out music with tapes and vinyl.  Your performances are like that.  Tell me about the aesthetic of Daniel Pujol.

DP: I’m confused by the term garage rock.  I think that’s a blanket term for I don’t even know, file under “G” for garage rock.

SZ: It has to go somewhere on the shelf.

DP: I did different things with different ways that I record.  Whenever I’m recording alone, versus that version of “Too Safe” that there’s a video of that Stuart Copeland did. I’ll be able to describe the aesthetic by describing you the method of how that recording was brought about:

Last year, on October 15ht, my birthday, I went to buy some t shirts to screen on them.  I got home and realized they were baby t’s.  I was like, well dammit, its really cold outside and I have go take these baby clothes back to the store and I’ve already opened them all and I hope they take them back.  And they weren’t even good baby t shirts.  They were weird, wide and short baby t shirts for like a football baby.

I set up and I had a vague idea and for that one — and for most of the ones that I do alone — I will sort of structure it out in my head and then I went and played the drums all the way through and structured  itup until a point.  I listened to that drum track and said “all right, this is what I have to work with.” I’m pretty quick to instill a boundary on what I’m doing and work within that boundary.  With technology, you could tweak forever and what are you doing if you’re tweaking forever?

I did the drums and they came out the way they are on the recording and I did the guitar over it and I played things that made the whole recording match up and then I want and did a bass-over and vocals.  I had written and recorded it in three hours.  The aesthetic of that and a lot of the things that I do on my own are intentionally kinetic.  I just went and did the drums first and then I structured everything on top of that and what happened is what I had to make work.  It was the course of a three to four hours like that.

I spend more time finding what room I want to do my thing in than setting up.  Another boundary I impose upon myself when I’m doing that kind of recording alone is that I will limit myself to what happens to be set up that day or if my roommate’s not home, I can use the kitchen.  Its kind of a constant whatever is readily available type of thing.

I just did a b-side for a Christmas split with Turbo Fruits and I did it in the bedroom of where I’m living now.  I had to borrow stuff from my roommate who’s a DJ to be able to record the vocals.

SZ:  Did you write your own Christmas tune?

DP: I ended up writing my own Christmas tune.  Its called “Shopping at the End of the World.”

With the home recording, I think I’m like Jackson Pollack: just throw it on there and its very kinetic.  That’s just what happened. I want to translate that “this is just what happened” aspect into the recording.  You really could spend a lot of time setting up to record and saving up for months to get a certain microphone.

Simulating interpersonal chemistry

SZ:  So its like the chemistry of the moment.

DP: Yes, the chemistry of the moment.  And I like to do it all at once if I can because it simulates interpersonal chemistry of playing with other people.  When I did Meemaw, for example, with Wes and Jessica, when we would record, it would be drums, guitar, bass and then we would do vocals together.  We would streamline it and you get what happened and in that case, it was excellent.  Like, divinely awesome interpersonal chemistry and creative chemistry.

Every since I was able to capture that kind of feeling in a recording, I try to capture new interpersonal chemistry with the stuff I’m doing myself and with the ensemble that I tour and perform with or with other groups of people that I record with.  With the “Too Safe” recording, I tried to see if I could simulate interpersonal chemistry alone by trying to streamline the process from me to you.  And can people tell?

Going back to “a good musician is good because you can’t tell if he messes up.”  Well, if he messes up, then it must be some kind of crazy human thing and can it be simulated?

SZ:  Oh man, you’re blowing my mind here!

DP:  Not to say that it should be simulated, but I would like to hope that people are like “Nah, that’s just some guy playing all the instruments; that’s not people.”

When I do recordings with other people, I’m choosing those people that I’m recording with because of their individual styles and personality traits.  Bringing all of these different kinds of people together to make a recording.  So, in one element I’m essentially trying to simulate interpersonal chemistry and kinetically streamline an idea and manifest it the way its going.  Another way of me doing it with Joey, Sean and Adam — individually and stylistically, I think they’re awesome and I like playing with them as a four piece and doing recordings together because I think if them as people are broadcasting good vibes, that needs to be recorded.  Its just another opportunity to showcase the possibility of interpersonal chemistry and what cooperation between different kinds of people can sound like.

SZ:  Say you’re playing a song you recorded and wrote yourself and then get on stage and play it with people that weren’t part of that initial process, how does that adapt to your live show?

DP:  The individual style element of it.  For instance, in my version of the “Too Safe” recording, I’m trying to simulate interpersonal chemistry, streamline it and anything that could have been a mistake becomes a part of it and as it happens it becomes an element of the composition.  Compare that to the Third Man single, the b-side of ‘Too Safe,” everyone playing on that, stylistically, are individuals.  The original idea of the “Too Safe” recording was like “Let’s put the idea to the test.”  So, instead of simulating the interpersonal chemistry, lets see what this song actually sounds like when subjected to interpersonal chemistry.

SZ: What was the verdict? How did it match up?

DP: I think it matched up good.  I really couldn’t have predicted it.  Its successful in the sense that I could not have predicted it.  Especially the jam at the end.  I never would have done that.  I ended up structuring it for performing and recording. They were all like “We’re really good at our instruments, can we shred?” I’d be like “I don’t know about that, but OK, let’s try it out!”  I like it.

When I listen to it, I’m like “Sean’s so good at guitar!” and  “That’s a really good bass line that Joey wrote!”  What’s interesting is that they interpreted the chords and scales from mine.  They were totally different than the ones we did in my version.  It has a totally different feeling and tonal hue to it.  The one I did myself was all major and there’s some darker bluesy stuff going on in the live one.  Greg Meredith played drums on that recording and he viewed the structure of the song differently than I did.  That, in turn, allowed Joey and Sean to augment the positioning of their sections over the songs.

In my brain the song was sectioned differently, it was sectioned in eighths.  It’s almost like “I wonder that that dude’s thinking.”  Well, here’s this song that to me is static, because I’ve written the words and chords and recorded one version of it. So, you ask “what are you thinking about it?”

SZ: It doesn’t make sense for them to come in and play over what you did.  They can lend their own thing.

DP: Yeah.  I also like doing that for other reasons aside from artistic and creative reasons.  There’s a lot of good players around town and they don’t really ever get mentioned.  What’s the different between Sean Thompson being an amazing lead guitar player and me writing a song.  How is that different artistically?  Just because he’s playing lead guitar doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have his own name on the back of the record. You see what I’m saying?

Part II

How the grown ups do it

SZ:  You said working with Jack White on the Black Rabbit album that he had a “good sense of self, narrative and aesthetic.”  You’ve mentioned in other interviews a lot about narrative, we’ve talked a lot about aesthetic.  What did you take away in those areas after working with him?

DP:  I’ll answer it in a before and after pattern.  Before, all of my experience with recording had been in a studio like “All right man, I have a couple of free hours today. Come here and record a song to appease someone that could want to put a record out because they don’t think the laptop fidelity is high enough even though everyone is in to lo-fi music and its supposed to sound like your did it in your house because you did it in a studio and not that you really did it in your house.”

SZ:  I think I’m going to have to put a diagram next to that one.

DP:  The logic is ridiculous.  It was kind of like the studio had been this tedious thing I would have to do to appease other people.  I has a good experience with Lonnie Huthcinson, but I don’t know anything about Pro Tools, so even when I was recording with him I’d be like “Uh, click that!” And he was doing it for free and didn’t have time for that.  I had no way to communicate through the technology what I’m hearing.

The situation with Third Man was different because it was anchored by there being a producer and separate engineer. I had never experienced that before or really thought about that division of labor or division of labor period as being conducive to art or being creative.

I got in there and realized I’m usually doing all three of those things: performing, producing and recording.  I was like “Dang!” I thought about it and if there’s a part that might sound a little wonky with three string instruments, there’s a producer there to be like “Change that note!” As opposed to me trying to keep the headphones on my head and play my guitar.

SZ:  Without having to go back and listen to what you just did.

DP: Yeah, without having to run around in a circle.  It was good to see how grown ups do it.  It was a good clean situation and this was their jobs.  This is what it looks like for it to be a job. And this is how it works, as opposed to me in a basement at one o’clock in the morning tracking drums.  This is a place people go during the day time.  It’s a job.

SZ:  How did it feel to see it through that lens?  To look at that particular point in your career as a job?

DP:  I think something that everyone in town has in common is that we’ve always viewed it as a job or as a potential job.  I certainly know that Jake Orrall from Jeff the Brotherhood and Ben Todd from Nashville’s Dead ad D. Watusi that we share that mentality of it already being a job even thought you haven’t gotten paid yet.

It was what I had hoped to be able to see; that there was in fact somewhere on earth where people make art during the day time.

SZ: When did you go all-in with it? When did it click in your head that you had to look at is a job?

DP: Probably when Meemaw started up.  2007 or so.  We were running shows out of our house, recording ourselves and we did that album, a CD and 7 inch on Infinity Cat.  The album was already recorded before they put it out.  It was kind of like all the artistic side of it had been taken care of.  Once that was done, it was performing shows and putting a record out.  Basically, since we put one record out and starting running as well as booking and playing shows.  It was like “Oh, wow, this is totally possible.”  Of course, for a while, it was limited and a fringe thing and an alternate way of living to what was available or presented to people in their early 20s in 2007.

Punk’s dead body

SZ: You mentioned Ben Todd and Jake Orral.  What does that community mean to you and the relative success you’ve experienced over the last few months?

DP: Primarily its an artistic community.  I think, as a whole, it’s a answer “Is punk dead?” Yes, punk’s dead and its dead body is in every mall all over the world.  Its being dig up and rug all over town and its like Elvis’ dead body with a leathr jacket on.  Its propped up in the record section and there’s a 15 year old kid putting eyeliner on it and there are piercings all over its face.  What it means to me and how its helped me, I think there’s a large group of people here have realized this idea of being a deviant, somehow using music to do things like escape work or “stick it to the man.” I think those ideas are born out of trying to avoid economic or political repression.  We live in a country where you can where an “I Hate The President” tshirt all day long and go to school and be like “look at my Tshirt, this is who I am!” It’s the democracy of the marketplace.  You can buy your lifestyle.  The lifestyle that’s primarily sold, due to the way that music and things have been presented through the media is some kind of esoteric knowledge like “I know what’s really going on; I have a lip ring.”

You know how much money tattoos cost?  You know what I mean?  Tattoos are expensive, so are leather jackets and piercings.  Not to say any of its bad, but symbolically!  I have tattoos and I’ve had piercings before.  Not to say there’s anything wrong any of that.  I like piercings and tattoos, but in the active way not in the passive way.  Not, in the way of “I’m going to go to tattoo shop, flip open the book and I want the demon lady on the crescent moon because my favorite color is blue.”

It’s this unique snowflake, we’re all special and entitled kind of stuff.  That mentality’s not sustainable at all.  It also requires you to participate in an economic system and social system and a lifestyle system in order for you to be able to afford to buy the things that would let people know you don’t believe in what you’re actually having to do!

There’s a conceptual monopoly over the deifntiion of what work is.  Being able sell deviance, social deviance means that there must be some sort of conceptual monopoly over the majority of people between 10 and 30.  There’s a market that appeals to people who enjoy the implications of appearing deviant.  And its kind of a double-edged sword, because if its so common and normal and you have people on CMT who have eyeliner on and they coreogrpahed “rocking out,” what does that mean about culture? Its been totally domesticated.  Punk rock has been completely domesticated.  Its in the malls, its over.

SZ: I’ve always looked at punk rock as an attitude.  Its not the music, its not the visual…

DP: It’s a perennial philposphy.

SZ:  Those things personified it at the time and it was personified differently in the 80s and the 90s.  Is that community the personification of it now?

DP: The origins of punk rock are grounded in media and art theory.  European media and art theory.

Rock and roll and hip-hop and a lot of things have all happened for the same reason.  The same reason being what I’m told is supposed to work doesn’t work any more, so I have to improvise.  When you said punk rock’s a mentality, I think what people call punk rock they limit to a time period.  Or at the same time, that’s just what they attiude was called during that time period.  Now, its kind of like supposed to mean that, but its also very grounded in a commercial and prepackaged undertsnaidng of it, which sort of limits its ability.  But, at the same time, because it has been domesticated, apparently doing it yourself and being a nonconformist, apparently those virtues are accepted b mainstream culture.  So, I feel like people my age right now, who are doing music, they’re kind of like “you said we could work, you said it was OK, but we don’t want to wear makeup.” We’re all just playing rock and roll music, it just looks different every 10 or 15 years.

That emotional hot button

SZ: It sounds like you have nice little corner in Nashville to create this thing.  Nashville’s full of people staged and rocking out with perfectly placed eyeliner on CMT right now the road, but there’s a hige spectrum in between.  So, outside of your community…

DP:  Let me clarify that this is not a jab at anything else that’s going on.  At least speaking for myself, its experimenting with that idea if it’s possible or not.

SZ:  It sounded like what you were saying was an observation.  It’s a spectrum and you’re over there because it fits and everything else is cool because people are doing different things.

DP:  Its good and necessary for people to do different things.

SZ:  You wouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing and it wouldn’t have the saem effect.  Nashville’s pretty inclusive of all of these things.  In terms of your music, how does the music in Nashville, the country music scene, the vibe here affect what you’re writing?

DP: I feel like contemporary country music, a lot of the writing of it takes an easily relatable hyper-emotional observation or interpersonal situation.  If there’s an emotional hot button on my body and I was to write a contemporary country song, I’d be like “Ok, I’m gonna write a country song about a high school sweetheart, that’s good, and she runs over my dog, and that’s bad.  You’re sad about, but you’ve got this truck that makes you feel good.” Its this connect-the-dots kind of thing.  The narrative becomes this hyper-real, crazy monologue.  And then the chorus is almost a catch-phrase crudely interjected.  Like someone has a cowboy hat that has country sayings on it and they pull it out and say “I’m a little too country for that! Ok. I love this American ride! Ok.”  Its interesting because its so popular that whenever you listen to it, its like I don’t feel like that, what does that mean?  Because so many people must feel like that or they just want to feel something and this is emotionally-loaded material and they’re buying it to be able to feel it.  Maybe it is an emotional hot button and people are just purchasing an emotional high. [Daniel interjects his replication of an emotional high, which includes shaking and buzzing]

I try not to do that because it seems meticulously calculated, if that makes sense at all.  That’s an artform in itself and I respect it, but it’s the way that I want to write.

Interpersonal crap-shoot

SZ: What’s your plan to gain appeal then?  How do you expect to garner an audience?

DP: Garner an audience?

SZ: To grow your audience.

DP: My attempt at garnering an audience is essentially a crap-shoot to find out if I’m in touch with people or not.  So, its almost like a really big interpersonal barometer in the sense that I don’t want to write certain narratives like “I was right about this, but you were wrong about this” narrative and the “you were so bad to me and I feel sorry for myself about it” song.  There’s a lot of narratives in music that you’re able to not have to be accountable for your actions as an individual in order to be able to relate to it.

Think about if the majority of songs you listen to essentially support the premise that you were right about everything, that doesn’t sound like peace in the valley.  It doesn’t sound like that, its not the lion laying with the lamb.  It’s the lion being “everyone get down!” and all the lambs are on the ground being like “He’s nice.”  That rampant subjectivity and of course the objective is just the objective as the subject – Ayn Rand -- I don’t want to encourage that thought process.  There are other people and other people aren’t hell unless you somehow assume that you can achieve some kind of material where you don’t have to deal with other people. Why even call it “deal” with other people?  Be around other people and interact without being a floating brain that trapped inside of a human body and just so happens to be right about everything and the star of their own media.

SZ: So you try to give people a way to connect?

DP: I want to experiment with writing narratives that, in order for you to listen an understand – and its not always going to be like this and I’m not going to hold myself to it – you can’t be justified in your perspective.  You are not solely able to be justified in your individual perspective, because that would make you insane.

SZ:  People get that three-minute window to be insane and connect with that one artist.  You’re doing this connect the dots from the audience to the artist and back down to the artist.

DP:  If I write a song, its not a fucking piece of candy.  Its not “I hungry, I want a hamburger. I’m sad, I want to reinforce that.”  [Emotional hotbuttoning again] There’s a different between challenging a state of mind and augmenting your state of mind.  Augmenting your state of mind continues the assumption you were satisfied with who you were yesterday or five seconds ago and you’re interested in maintaining that foundational state as your static being.  Is that real? Is static real?

Thought exercises

SZ: You’ve talked a lot about how the words are where a lot of your passion lies.  We’ve talked a lot about narrative too.  Who has influenced you in terms of writing lyrics and making that connection?

DP: That’s a really good question.  I’ll just start naming off people I like and then I’ll figure it out.  I read a whole lot of Charles Bukowski, I really, really like Charles Bukowski and I appreciate how blunt he is in his writing.  Last summer, I got an Alan Ginsberg anthology and I just burned through like half of that.  Its like 700 pages long.  I got up until he was 24 when I was 24 and I’m 25 now, so I’m going to see what that’s like.  I think I had only really exposed to “Howl” in high school and its taken me a while to be able to really sit down and read poetry and be able to internalize it and not feel like I’m doing homework.  There’s a philosopher/writer guy called Jiddu Krishnamurti who writes essays that are thought exercises.  I’d say that one, the idea of being able to propose this situation that is a thought exercise and create a situation where you either read it and pay attention to it or you don’t.  It’s a thought exercise if you read it and in order for you to understand the sentence you just read, you’re tricked into performing a thought exercise.

Interviewer: Dave Sharp

Notable links:

PUJOL
Turbo Time Records
Infinity Cat Records
Third Man Records
Meemaw
Natural Child
D. Watusi
Nashville’s Dead
JEFF the Brotherhood
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Charles Bukowski
Alan Ginsberg