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(Feb.
13, 2007) PCM's Kelsey talked to Reuben
Butchart about his new album, "Golden Boy," as well
as his childhood and musical influences.
Reuben: Hi Kelsey, how are you?
Kelsey: I'm pretty good, how about you?
R: I'm good; I've been running around a lot, getting
ready for the record release.
K: Oh yeah, when is the release?
R: Well officially, the record is available February
27th, but we're having our record release party in New York City
on March 7th at 9:30.
K: Oh that's fun, are you excited?
R: Yeah, I'm totally excited. But I'm running around
and just trying to get stuff pulled together and making arrangements
and you know making announcement cards, all the fun stuff.
K: So you grew up in San Francisco, and you attended
alternative public schools, what was that experience like for you
and how did it shape the way you make music?
R: Well you know what, it's like, San Francisco is
a hot bed of liberalism and it's one of the coolest cities in the
world because it's a place where, at least when I was growing up,
during the time I was growing up, diversity was really important
and the idea of alternative ways of looking at everything or ways
of doing things or stuff like that, was the whole vibe. People are
really interested in exploring different cultures and everything.
And you know because of my family situation we were not going to
be going to any fancy private schools or anything like that. My
mom was really interested in nurturing our minds, our bodies and
our creative outlets and plus as a single mom she kind of had to
keep us busy. So she just was really energetic about getting us
into the best programs she could find, if you're going to go to
public school, a lot of them are great but she wanted to find the
best one. The one with the most interesting academics and interesting
teachers and one that would also foster creativity and get us to
look at things in different ways. So she found San Francisco Community
School, which was a relatively new school at the time. The school
also was very against stereotyping, to the point of like if people
wanted to be called a she and it was a little boy, that was fine,
have long hair and be a boy fine, wear hippie clothes and no underwear,
fine. All that kind of stuff, the acceptance, the tolerance was
something that I grew up with. That's totally shaped my perspective
on how I deal with people and how I interact and my acceptance level
of diversity and plus I realize this, and I only realized it in
relation to other people as an adult. I was nurtured by my folks,
my family, my grandparents to be an artist from the very beginning
of my life. It wasn't until after I graduated from college and had
to get a job as a pizza delivery boy that I realized, oh wow, no
body ever said to me you have to major in business or nursing, because
you're going to have to make a living for yourself. No body ever
said that to me. I found that out later myself, on my own. I was
really nurtured as an artist and I didn't realize that until I was
older, but I'm really lucky.
K: So what kind of music were listening to as a
kid growing up?
R: Our family would have like Disco dancing sessions.
My parents, are relatively young, and they wanted to go out and
you know, do the hustle. They would get ready to go disco dancing,
pops would put on the three piece suit, and mom would put on the
red gorgeous polyester number and they would get their little warm
up practice dancing at home before getting ready to go out. So my
little sister and I would disco dance. Also my dad was really into
the Beatles but my mom didn't like the Beatles. My mom, well both
my parents were big Mo-town heads. I listened to tons of mo-town,
Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, the first phase of Temptations.
I was also listening to Jazz standards a little bit. I listened
to tons of Baroque music. So I always knew from age 5 onward that
I wanted to be a composer, write songs and sing them. In high school,
I had my own little doo-wop group, called the Cleartones and we
just sang old school mo-town stuff and our own arrangements of stuff.
I learned a lot from those guys, singing.
K: While playing with Antony and the Johnson's
you worked on your debut album "Dusk" with Steve Bagley
and I understand you made most of it in an unheated bedroom in a
house in SOHO, how did that whole experience shape the album?
R: Well basically I had this long scholastic lifetime
of learning certain things about music but I'd never really besides
the doo-wop band in high school had had a band before. And during
college in New York at NYU, that's where I met Steve Bagley we were
college roommates and after we were done with school we moved into
this house. And we were so naïve, we didn't bother to find
out, you know does it have adequate hearting, are there no rodents
here, because we were like artists. Neither of us had ever had bands,
had never played out in New York, never did a gig, and we had saved
up some money and we said we could use this money and buy time in
an expensive recording studio and record ourselves live, except
we didn't' have experience playing live so what were we going to
record. Or we could use the money and buy home recording technology,
with a computer and do it ourselves. Learn how to both engineer,
record and write and perform at the same time. So we opted for that
idea. We used to joke that we're desktop musicians.
So how it shaped the music was because we didn't have a band and
because I hadn't written songs with a band or with a piano, we made
loops. We would make things and cut them up and re record them and
tweak them with the computer and then make a bunch of loops. So
we made a library of loops and collage them together. Since that
album I haven't done it that way again, that's why the albums are
so different.
K: Where do you find the most inspiration for writing
songs?
R: Oh well…myself. No I'm kidding. (laughs). I think
it is myself, it's horrible.
K: It's not horrible, it's truthful.
R: I feel like you know, what are songs supposed to
do. Songs are supposed to entertain people, make them forget their
troubles, get into a happy place. That's what most main-stream pop
music is about, but also the real core of it is the chance to connect
with somebody, connect with another human being, connect with people,
either to forget your troubles and be happy or to feel a deep emotion
together- like a sense of loss or a sense of euphoric happiness.
And I think you know, that's the best music, that's why people have
music and that's why people get so offended when you make fun of
their music because they closely identify themselves with their
music choice. So when I've learned something in the course of my
life, like maybe I've had to get over a hurdle or a revelation has
come to me about how the world works or how people are, I put it
into a song and a lot of the songs on this record came from what
I learned about myself looking back at my childhood. It's called
'Golden Boy' because I'm from San Francisco and California is the
golden state and San Francisco has the Golden Gate.
K: If you weren't a musician what career do you
think you would have chosen?
R: Umm a musician. (laughs)
K: Good answer, so what's next for you?
R: We're focused on pulling out all the stops we can
at least here in New York to do a big record release to try and
leverage the opportunities with Internet. These days do you really
need a record label? Ideally yeah, it'd be great to have one because
they hook you up with a tour and blah blah blah. But I'm releasing
this record myself so I'm hoping to sell copies through the internet.
And then we're going to try and do some music videos because that's
a good way to bring people into the story of a song, and also it's
fun. I've written probably two albums worth of songs so I need to
record those too. I'm going to try another approach. The first album
was electronica, this one was like a classical/soul/orchestral album
and the new one is going to be something else. But maybe I shouldn't
let the cat out of the bag yet.
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