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| Tim Ellison : Father Of The Nephews |
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| Eric Shaggy Cullen: The Piano Man |
TWIN INFINITIVES
Eric and Tim Talk Music
EC: Tim, first off, I just want to tell you that you are my first real songwriting influence. Although I only played with you in The Nephews for eight months, that short amount of time learning your songs gave me a lifetime of tools with which to write my own songs. Your chord progressions and melodic phrases taught me more about constructing a tight and interesting rock song than I ever learned in four years of music school. Tell me, how did you begin to write songs? What was the first song you wrote? How old were you? What instrument did you first learn to play? What are your early musical influences?
TE: I would say my early influences were very songwriting-oriented. I wanted to do it as early as middle school, which for me was late-'70s/early '80s. I had gotten interested in '60s rock as a child, but it was also that a lot of these guys - the ex-Beatles, Dylan, Pete Townshend - were still active. I think I saw that as viable creative work and something that was also viable as a profession, really. I guess I was fairly serious about it from an early age. (Really started writing genuinely when I was 16.)
Have had different inspirations as far as style goes through the years, but that facet of it remains for me and I'm still interested in people that have made a career of it. I still like McCartney, Dylan, John Cale, Jonathan Richman, etc. My favorite twenty-something songwriter is Joanna Newsom.
TE: You had a different take-off point from me in that you were a piano player. Who were your early influences?
EC: My dad listened to a lot of music when I was growing up. He was into jazz, folk and, later, classical. Bob Dylan made the biggest impact on me. Funny thing is, my dad only had one of his records, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but it had the biggest and most longlasting effect on my musical growth, and so much of Dylan remains in me to this day. My dad never listened to rock, though, so I ended up discovering it on my own through the radio. The first stuff I bought on my own was Elton John and Electric Light Orchestra, when I was 10 years old, so like 1977-78. When I turned 13, I had a friend who turned me on and opened doors into the wide world of music. I became a record hound, and pretty much devoured anything that came along. I enjoyed progressive rock, like Yes, Pink Floyd, and Rush. Hard rock such as Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Pop music like the Police and the Cars. But through all the various styles, the main elements of rhythm, harmony and melody remain the same, so as long there was some appeal for me, I didn't much care what style it was cloaked in. I remember a guy at my high school remarking to me one time, "You like Yes and Motorhead??? How can that be?"
Even though I play piano, I'm really more influenced by guitar players. Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi, Alex Lifeson, Eddie Van Halen. I love their fluidity, their phrasing, especially during solos. I love the way that the music seems to pour out of them effortlessly. In rock, there weren't (and still aren't) a whole lot of piano players or keyboardists I wanted to emulate. I mean, I like Rick Wright but his mostly atmospheric style was not something I wanted to do. Elton John is great but not rock enough. Rick Wakeman (of Yes) is too flourishy. So for my piano player heros, I generally look to jazz: Thelonious Monk and McCoy Tyner are my two biggest inspirations.
TE: OK, yes, jazz! That actually gives me a really cool angle for listening to your songs - one that I hadn't considered before.
And "record hound" is key for me, too. I can talk about the kind of songwriter I've always wanted to be in general, and role models, but lots of things make an impact. Like the middle part of "Every Green Knoll" wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been listening to Todd Rundgren around the time that I wrote that song (not that it sounds like him necessarily, but just the fact that I was listening to him was affecting how I was thinking about things).
That song came out of buying a guitar I'm currently using, actually, and I've got three other pieces I've done with it since, which are all up here:
http://soundcloud.com/timellison2
At this point, I am definitely thinking that I'd like to build on these pieces and ultimately do something like an "album."
I think "Lifeboat" is one of my favorites of your new songs. What can you tell me about that one? I'm interested in your method.
EC: Yeah, influences are a funny thing. I mentioned Black Sabbath and Rush, and other bands, but my music doesn't sound at all like them. But those are the bands that bombarded my brain when I was young so their impact on me is undeniable. I think that as record collectors, we listen to a lot of different music for pleasure, but as songwriters, we hone in on very particular artists, or else we take things here and there from random artists. Like you taking from Todd Rundgren. On one old song of mine, I very consciously lifted a riff from Eddie Money, but I don't listen to Eddie Money.
As far as my writing method, the overwhelming majority of my songs are a result of improvisation. I sit at the piano and let my fingers and ears wander. I always try to find new and interesting sounds. I trust to the well of the unconscious to draw out some new facet of expression. Eventually, patterns form, then the patterns become raw ideas for verse and chorus. Bridges usually take more work. Lastly, the overall arrangement takes shape. This process can take anywhere from one day to many months. Sometimes a song seems to fall out of the sky, fully formed. Or I'll have a riff or chord progression that I keep coming back to and hammering on. "Lifeboat" is of the latter category. I'd been playing the main verse riff for a couple years. Finally one day the rest came together.
I've always been primarily interested in the music, you know, the instrumental parts of songwriting. So the lyrics are always an afterthought. Only rarely do I have a lyric that I set to music. My process for writing the lyrics is very similar to that of writing the musical parts: I usually record a finished song, and then improvise some singing over it. Melodies suggest a phrase or line. Because music is communication, I want the lyrics to have some meaning of course, but usually the meaning doesn't reveal itself until after the fact. In the case of "Lifeboat", the line "in a lifeboat shiny and new" was probably one of the first things that emerged, and from there the song developed into being a song about faith. Also the idea that lifeboats (real lifeboats on a ship) are always new, until the unfortunate event of a sinking. But the last line, "Everyone knows it's the time of your life to be free," suggests that if we have been lucky enough to get on a lifeboat and avoid death, we have the opportunity to re-create life anyway we want. When I look back at the real events that were going on in my life, I wrote it a couple years after a break-up with a long-term girlfriend, and even though I was devastated at the time of the break-up, I was able to start over and turn my life truly into the life I have always wanted. If I had sat down to write lyrics about that breakup, it would have been a completely different song.
Tell me about your methods. Have they changed over the years? How have your lyrics changed?
TE: For a long time, lyric writing was mostly just inspiration for me. Now, I think it's more about process.
At a certain point, I didn't know what my aesthetic was anymore. I wasn't coming up with anything that seemed to define some direction. It's only recently that I realized that I can just rely on myself and my own experiences to determine direction. And if I devote myself to just writing and seeing where it goes, the old paramaters of what I like and what I don't like still end up shaping the result. I may not know where I'm going and I may not be basing things around little poetic hooks that just come to me, but maybe the hooks will emerge out of the process.
I didn't write for seven years. The Nephews ended in 1997 and I was still writing and playing for a couple of years after that, but nothing from 2000-2007. Did you say that you went through a period of not being very active also?
EC: Oh yeah, I was inactive for about 5 years there, from around 2001 to 2005. In '05 I wrote about a half dozens songs but I didn't start performing again until like 2009. My life energy had been directed elsewhere: family, career, other interests like photography. In 2009, I recorded the album Way Out West , which includes the song "Lifeboat", and that kind of kickstarted me back into the music world again. From there I joined a band for the first time since Freeloaders ended back in 1998. It was a smooth jazz band called, appropriately enough, Still Smooth. Not exactly my kind of music, but very challenging and it opened up a lot of new opportunities. We played wineries, parties, and my most high-profile gig up to that point, the Cotati Jazz Festival. I quit playing with them in August of 2010 so that I could devote my time to finding something more in line with my musical passions, but the experience of playing jazz again got my improv and group-playing skills back up to snuff. I'm currently playing in Joe Chaplin Band. Joe is a singer-songwriter about 10 years older than me, so his influences are more classic rock oriented. He likes Bowie, Neil Young, Dylan, of course. We do about 60% originals, the rest covers. Most of the covers are somewhat obscure. For example, we do Captain Beefheart's "My Head is My Only House." When I told the guys we used to do "Kandy Korn" in the Nephews we became instant buddies!
I'm still not writing much these days, but I have a lot of closet-clearing to do. My current project is an anthology of my 4-track work dating from 1989 to 2000. I have the analog to digital transfer done, all I have left to do is create the cover art. The CD contains 24 songs, what I feel are my strongest solo recordings. I feel the need to preserve all that stuff because it's just been sitting in a box all these years on cassette tape. I think once I get this project behind me, I'll be ready to start a new spurt of songwriting. I can feel it simmering. And then I need to get a band together where I can be one of the main songwriters. Joe Chaplin is very open to my material, in fact we started playing one of my originals recently and the guys really do a good job with it. But I need to create my own thing, you know?
So do you think you'll ever play in bands again? In our current environment of virtual music, how do you feel about the whole idea of producing records and making artifacts?
TE: At this point, playing in a band would require investing in some gear, for one thing. My guitar playing style requires some softness and I think with a live drummer I have a tendency to overplay. It would be an interesting challenge for me now.
Funny, I've been listening to the Beach Boys over the last couple of weeks and that certainly drives home the appeal of having a variety of voices on songs (which is, of course, one of the potentially great things about bands).
I definitely like the streaming model (like Spotify) for music consumption. Still like the concept of "albums," even if a set of songs is only unified through that little thumbnail bit of artwork. (Would be nice to see a service like Spotify allow for more artwork from a given album to be seen somehow.)
Recently bought a little midi keyboard, but I haven't used it yet. Wanted to use it for Garageband to play preset sounds in the program (processed, probably - been using a little early '80s Casio keyboard and processing the sounds in Garageband, but it's monophonic). What are you thinking you want to do with your music sonically at this point? I noticed some of the overdubbed keyboard parts using different sounds on your CD - something I don't remember you doing in the past.
EC: I know what you mean about playing with a drummer. As a piano player, not only do I adjust my sound to the drums, but more importantly to the bass. I have the ability to play in the low register so I have to be careful not to get in the bass player's way and muddy up the sound. Over the years I've found that the most challenging part about being in a full band is creating a good sound, where all the parts are separated and distinctive and yet there is a unity in sound. It's easy to do in the studio, but live it's very tricky. Even though I enjoy recording my solo albums, I find real satisfaction in the band environment, simply because everyone brings something to the table. The results usually end up being greater than what I could have come up with on my own. I hope that we may hear you in a band again someday!
I guess growing up in the album age of popular music, I tend to cling to that modality. I just naturally think in terms of "albums." Individual songs are great, of course. They are the currency of people's experience of music: songs are played on the radio, songs constitute a band's live show, people download songs, songs become hits. But albums provide a timeframe to create an overall artistic statement. Naturally, the album art is a big part of that. An album can be very unified thematically, pasted together sloppily, homemade, slick and fashionable, philosophical, gothic, and so on. There are infinite possibilities of expression available with an album. I read somewhere recently that our current state of music consumption is based on the 1950's model, when albums were rare and hit singles were the basic unit of music product.
As far as what I want to do sonically, I haven't changed much since my early days of writing. Basically I try to find the sounds that help the song come to life. Overdubbing sounds, like on my latest album, is actually not new for me. I've been doing it since my earliest recordings. It's just that on Way Out West I used some different sounds like fiddle and strings. Also, these days I've allowed country style and country instruments to assume a role in my sound. Overall, though, I've always tried to create a sound that is both accessible and inventive. I want people to like it, but I want it to be interesting and challenging to play. At heart I'm still a rocker and I still dig the interplay between two guitarists, or a guitarist and keyboardist. I still love the energy produced by a bassist and drummer.
Right now there are two trends in music which I'm not particularly crazy about: overt pop, which shows up in everything from rock to country and even modern jazz, and the soft sounds of much "alt rock" or "alt country" that seems to be what the hip folks are listening to today. I feel like the landscape needs a fresh shot of powerful music. I mean powerful both sonically and emotionally, challenging and engaging.
I really enjoyed reading your short-lived series, "Rock Mag", back in the mid '90's. You think and write deeply about music. Some of the articles I had to read several times before I really got the gist of what you were saying. (That's a compliment, by the way!) Are you still writing about music? Are there any writers working today who have that deep love and critical capacity for rock, in the vein of Joe Carducci or Lester Bangs? Is rock journalism even relevant today?
TE: Thanks! Yeah, actually, I've been doing a blog called This I Heard for about two years (http://thisiheard.blogspot.com). It's musicology-based but still criticism, too. Did some freelance writing in '04-'07, but haven't been doing any straight criticism for the last few years,
There are definitely a lot of good writers around. I like the online forum "I Love Music" a lot; a lot of music writers participate there. At its best, it can be really good real-time interactive music writing and a nice online community. It's been going for over ten years now.
EC: Cool, I'll check your blog. Tim, it's always a pleasure to share ideas with you. I wish you the best in your future prusuits.
TE: Yes, a pleasure for me as well. Thanks for doing this.
