Josh Clark and Reed Mathis at Summer Camp – photo by John Schulze
Josh Clark has had a productive year. That much is sure. With the release of Tea Leaf Green’s latest studio album, the cleverly titled Radio Tragedy!, with its implications of another time and a mysterious crime, the guitarist/vocalist with his quintet appears ripe for another round of touring in support of the album. However, after a summer season where the band supported Matisyahu, exposing its music to a whole other different kind of fan base, he also dips his feet into the waters of side projects. Indeed, on September 15, Josh Clark and the Holdouts play a gig at San Francisco’s Boom Boom Room, a mere couple of weeks before TLG’s homecoming gigs at San Francisco’s Independent, while also being an occasional member of the satirical rock band, Fancy Ketchup.
Jambands.com caught up with Clark the day after a “hole in one” prevented the musician from doing an interview. On this day, Clark was “at the studio in Oakland, working on the Holdouts, a side project with Cochrane [McMillan, TLG drummer],” further blurring the artistic imagery between his many roles at this point in his career. Clark is in fine form, as always, as we discuss the latest album, the current state of music, the industry, touring, the wonders of happenstance, and the man’s sleep paralysis, which has not only hampered his rest on occasion over the years, but influenced his art—on stage and on the canvas. Nevertheless, any misfortune seems to be turned on its head by Clark, and that, in the end, may be one of the main reasons why his charm overpowers his adversity.
RR: I want to start off with the hole-in-one-story from yesterday.
JC: Oh, yeah. (laughter) Actually, our tour manager and main road dog, Todd [Wallenbrock] and I were golfing. I wasn’t even going to go, couldn’t afford it, or whatever, and he said, “This is my treat. I’ll take you.” Basically, maybe he knew it was going to happen so he had a witness there. (laughter) Anyway, we were on the eighth hole, a little par three, he lifted it up in the air, it looked good, hit a little bank, and goes right inside, flips right in. Yeah, I had never seen a hole-in-one before in my life, and it was by my buddy. Incredible. And, then, you know, we celebrated. He had to buy everybody shots after that, which rendered me incapable of conversation.
RR: Since you mentioned that you were in the studio working with Cochrane, how has the two drum setup changed the live performances for Tea Leaf Green?
JC: I think it’s freed us up a lot and made us more dynamic, it’s made us listen to each other more again, and we’ve rediscovered all the old songs along with the new stuff that we are creating. It brought a freshness to everything for one. Trevor, Scotty, and I have been together for thirteen years now, so we know what all of our shit is. (laughs) But, to bring somebody in who is really stoked and enthusiastic and just that attitude has probably shaped the sound more than general skill or chops or anything like that. In terms of style, Cochrane and Scotty are two completely different drummers how they approach it. We call Scotty the “Iceman.” We’ve called him that since we were kids. He’s always
really straight ahead and really steady and always keeping a steady backbeat and super solid. Bringing in Cochrane, you get a lot more of these little flairs and these little flourishes here and there that maybe Reed [Mathis, TLG bassist] can follow around and jump off the path and go on a little side trip while everything still maintains, and is steady, and the train doesn’t go flying off the rails. It’s actually been kind of fun. I think, for me, it’s been making music a real…it’s always been a pleasure for me, but it’s a real joy again, something I really look forward to doing—I want to get together and play.
RR: It was an accident how he joined the band, too, because of Scotty’s injury.
JC: Right. Yeah, totally. It was never planned. For years, everybody suggested, “Why don’t you add this? Why don’t you do this?,” and everybody was always, “Ah, fuck it, this is our band.” Whatever. We sound the way we sound. We aren’t going to add anything that we don’t have to. Obviously, when Ben [Chambers] left, we needed bass. (laughs) Yeah, it was a complete accident because Scott busted his ankle up really bad, and was injured a lot longer than it was supposed to be. We had our tour booked and everything, and we needed a drummer, so, fortunately, Cochrane had been working on our record Looking West with us, and this all happened around the CD release and party.
He knew that record to at least fake it through. We had Scotty setup on the drum kit sans the kick drum because his ankle was busted. He sort of just conducted Cochrane over there, and Cochrane did the best he could, and it actually wasn’t that bad. I enjoyed playing that first show with him. Everything got super-slowed back, and we created some interesting stuff. In some ways not worse or anything; you can have just as much energy in slow stuff as you do with really rocking stuff if you approach it correctly. Everything had enough speed to it, but that is what I remember about that first show—really slow, but different and interesting.
RR: Are you focusing on the engine room because you have to at that point?
JC: Yeah, well, when we first started, things were kicking back like he was playing behind us a little bit. But it has been a year and a half, and now, we are just all up to speed. We’re all part of it—a true collective. A few tours, and boom, you gel in, and it is really exceeding everybody’s expectations.
RR: Which brings me to Radio Tragedy!, and a few months after its release, the tracks still have a very fresh overall quality. There is a new and potent TLG sound on the album, and what is fascinating is that you were also going through a transition period. Do you look back on that album and think, “We really nailed it.”?
JC: Yeah, I definitely was feeling that on the last two records. I think Looking West has a lot to do with this record—getting out there and not giving a shit while experimenting as much as we could in the studio on Looking West. We were learning the boundaries, and learning how far we could take something. That was finally a record for us to make that had no expectations, no money riding on it, no record company, or anything like that. We were free to do whatever we wanted for the first time in years with making a record—maybe, the first time ever. (laughs) Maybe it was a transition period in management and stuff, but nobody was telling us shit. We were like kids in a candy shop—“Holy shit, this is amazing!” We actually could have fun. (laughs) I don’t care if anybody likes it, or if it is successful.
While we were working on those sessions, we had begun the next record sessions. It sort of spilled into that. We learned from the mistakes made on Looking West, and, also, we learned from the breakthroughs we made on it. And, also, we took a year to really work this one through. I think the difference is that we finally got control of our art from outside forces. That’s probably the biggest difference, actually.
RR: How so?
JC: Usually, it was “well, you have a week to do this; here’s the deadline, we have to get this out.” There were other situations where, all of a sudden, you’d have where somebody in the organization takes it and “here you go, guys, the record’s mixed.” (laughs) “Here you, go; sorry, but these four songs are off it.” You’d think, “What?!,” and the record company is running with it, and off it goes. Shit like that happens even for little bands like us. It is so frustrating because there’s this thing that you make in the beginning that is supposed to be this exercise of your complete freedom from everything, from the norm, and from the business world. At least for me, that’s what rock ‘n’ roll was—it’s the big “Fuck You.” And, all of a sudden, your big “Fuck You” is being taken over by people with good intentions, but they’ve taken over nonetheless, and you’re powerless to work on your own art, it’s really frustrating.
You’ve also entrusted people to help you along and you’re thinking, “These people are good; they know what they are doing,” but as we’re getting older, and we’re growing into men, we know what we want, and we want to control it. And that’s how the last two records have been.
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