Unwed Sailor lightens up

By Tom Chandler

With Little Wars , Jonathan Ford and his revolving cast of characters have created a gauzy dreamscape of an album. Backing off of the darkness of The White Ox , Ford has crafted the tenderest version of Unwed Sailor yet. With “Copper Islands,” a live staple from the last few years, as the cornerstone, Ford and his crew, including Matt Putman, Matt Depper, and Nic Tse, set about constructing the new songs from the ground up, working from rough demos Ford sent around and finding the right feel. The organic nature of the work paid off, with rich, chiming textures and upbeat lightness.

Tom Chandler: When you were making the record, did you put it all together in the studio, or did you go in with a pretty firm plan?

Jonathan Ford : There’s not really a firm plan. Most of it is put together in the studio. With Little Wars , two of the songs were recorded back in 2002, one of the songs was recorded in 2004 and then everything else was last fall. So we had a bit of the record already pretty much completed. With the other songs, I just had some acoustic ideas I just put down on Garage Band, I just used the acoustic as a bass. I sent those to the dudes who were going to play on the record to give them some ideas, and then we all just showed up. Matt? I had no idea what he was going to play on drums. We got in a room, set up mics and started jamming stuff out. That was cool, because before it was me with an acoustic and Garage Band playing a bass line on acoustic guitar, and then all of a sudden these songs just come to life! I hear the drums for the first time! That was really cool!

TC: Does it ever happen that you say “No! No! That’s not right!”

JF : Yeah, the song “Aurora” on the new record, we were having a hard time with that one. The bass line is really heavy distortion, so your first instinct is, oh, the song should be heavy. Matt Depper, one of the guitar players, was writing some stuff for it, and I remember looking through the window, he’s sweating, he has his guitar real low, just playing all this heavy stuff. I was thinking, this is just not working, it doesn’t fit! Then Andy Haldeman, the other guitar player, said, “what about this idea?” and he hits two big reverb notes. All of sudden it just took the edge off and made it lush. It was perfect! That worked. It’s just a matter of letting your intuition go.

TC: It seems to me that your last full length was the “dark” album and this one is much lighter, almost gauzy.

JF : Yeah, I agree! With The White Ox , at one point I wasn’t even going to release that as an Unwed Sailor record, because it’s unlike anything that we’ve done. What I had gone in to do, there was this seven inch that was released in Europe, and I have the files, so I went in to remix it.And the White Ox songs just started happening. So we just scrapped the seven inch idea (laughs), and as it happened, I thought, “there’s no way this could be an Unwed Sailor record, it’s just two dark.” Dan Burton, from Early Day Miners, recorded the album, he said, “it’s you, so it’s an Unwed Sailor record.” Basically that whole record was just him and I.

TC: It seemed like you were going to go with more vocals for a while.

JF : That was Dan Burton again. He said “you should sing!” So we went and go some beers and tried to write lyrics. We were drinking, and said “how about ‘fear the iguana’?” and he said “Face the sorcerer’s throne.” It’s perfect!

TC: Shoots the hell out of any deep meaning it might have had.

JF : Yeah, but I like the imagery, though. We did the backward masked vocals on it. We’d be driving around listening to Bauhaus and stuff. On the song “Night Diamond” we were trying to decide what kind of beat it should have, we used a lot of drum machine on that record. So we went to get something to eat, and we’re sitting there at this burrito place, and we heard this really faint beat over the sound system, and we were like “dude that’s the beat!” You never know where the inspiration’s gonna come from.

TC: I had in my head that you were like this control freak.

JF : I am a control freak in the way that I know when it’s Unwed Sailor and when it’s not. I like to get people together that I trust. Like Dan Burton for example, I know that everything I’ve heard Dan do, I like. I trust what he’s gonna play. If you can surround yourself with those kind of people, it’s gonna be good.

TC: Would you ever consider working with some name producer like Steve Albini or John McEntire?

JF : Yeah, but the only problem is that you’re paying a lot more for studio time, and the way we just go in and see what happens, that could be a disaster! (laughs) If we ever had a record that was all put together, I would love to do that, to have that outside voice. All of the Unwed Sailor records have been…, The Marionette and the Music Box was recorded in a trailer in Arkansas out in the woods, The White Ox was recorded in Dan Burton’s basement. Little Wars actually was a studio in Norman, Oklahoma. Chad, who recorded it, he’s going to Dallas a lot, he worked on Nick Lachey’s new record. Editing these drum beats. It’s cool that the guy who worked on the Nick Lachey record did the new Unwed Sailor album.

Posted in Features, Interviews