DM Stith -
Pity DanceIt's been quite a year. The songs that were once shared lightly in demo form across the internet are now part of one of the year's most-adored albums, and the man behind them has found himself touring continents and courting remixers.
David Stith has come a long way, and it's been well deserved. I figured he probably had some nice things to say about the whole experience, and he did.
Firstly: how are you?I'm well! enjoying some rest after a really busy year.
After all that's happened this year, what does Heavy Ghost mean to you now?Well, it's become "my first album" -- that is, this fall I've been working at new music and the songs on
Heavy Ghost and
Curtain Speech have necessarily been dissected, sitting in pieces on the table over there, sort of a memory of what they were. This is a good thing. I bet it doesn't sound like it is, but... it is.
'Braid of Voices' is one of my songs of the year. Can you talk a bit about the evolution of that song?Well, it began as three chords that any time I was near a piano, I'd hammer out. Those chords were beautiful to me -- the first progression in the song. At some point about a year before the record came out, I was had been given a key to a church in Brooklyn which had allowed me to search for songs on the piano therein. That's something I'd do for a couple hours every few days, usually in the dark, usually after the sun had gone down.
Did you have a clear vision of how you wanted it turn out when you started? What do the lyrics represent?No, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted, nor really of what I was trying to express. I had a feeling wrapped in memories. That's what I'm singing to in the song there. Originally it was a song explicitly about Buffalo, NY, where I grew up, and then it was a song to my sister, and then to a friend. It came together for me when I started singing it to myself.
With your previous releases dissected, how are you approaching the challenge of new music?Well, the starting process of song writing is pretty different from that of producing a record, so much of it has been dividing the two in my mind and making sure that I'm attending to the former and not relying on the later.
How did the series of remix EPs come about?The label was approached by some remix artists and I was starting to record some covers, and it just sort of evolved from there. I was sort of unraveling
Heavy Ghost through my performances, stripping down the songs and trying to find what I connected with. It's easy to over-perform.
It's been a long time since you had that demo of 'Thanksgiving Moon' floating about online. Do you see yourself differently now, as a person and a musician?oh sure. I keep growing. nothing fundamental, but I've learned a lot about what interests me about music and culture, and lots about myself in terms of what sorts of situations I do well in and what I should stay away from. All good things.
How do you feel about Ichabod & Apple now?My memory of it is beautiful, but I haven't listened to it in a long time. I should though. That would be nice. It's funny, I was thinking this morning that my writing process hasn't changed much since then, which I think is a good thing. It's always just a matter of starting to make a sound and following it with another sound, and another, and another. Word after word after word. If anything, I've grown a deeper grasp of the connection between music and my body; my whole body as an instrument. It's mystical. I'm more in love with music now than ever.
You went from being someone who'd never really played a show on his own to playing your own European tour. Some people find that very difficult, but you seemed to deal with it quite well. What was the tour like for you, and how was it playing with a band?Tour was a ton of fun. It helped that I brought along a band full of people far more experienced than I and really good at generating peace and graciousness throughout the trip. Performance was hard at first, for sure, and I have tons to learn about it. The hard part was getting over stage fright, but after the first few times I got up on stage, it wasn't such a big deal. Once I'm comfortable with people, I have a natural performance tendency... I just never imagined I'd be comfortable with a roomful of people I'd never met before.
The approach to songwriting you describe sounds quite unique. Are there any other songwriters you relate to?Oh, I think this is the way a lot of people write music. At least a lot of the musicians I listen to, the musicians that do a good job of staying away from cliche and seek to serve their creative impulses rather than an audience.
Were there any songs that you worked on that didn't make it onto Heavy Ghost?Yes -- those were released as the
Curtain Speech EP before
Heavy Ghost came out. They were the b-sides. Other than those, no, I didn't come close to finishing any other songs, nor am I working with any material from that time period or before.
How do you think other aspects of your life - moving around, teaching, design - have informed the music you make?That's a really big question... Hmm, let's see... Well, in particular, moving to Bloomington, which is in the middle of the Mid-West, (a region I knew next to nothing about until I moved here) has opened my eyes to a music culture built on different stuff than those I witnessed in Buffalo, Rochester, Philly and NYC. I'm still trying to articulate it, but it seems, in a way, counter-european. At least more insular. The influences here are more local -- emanating from a romanticism of masculinity. Music here is stuff you cross your arms and nod to. Sometimes I imagine when I'm at a show that we, the audience, have all just come in from working in the fields. I'm sure this would read as insulting to those living here, but it's not meant in any way like an insult or a degradation of the art, at all. I've been very inspired by what I've seen. It's a beautiful sentiment to me, if still sentimental.
Furthermore, this is a college town with a really strong music school and a local world music festival that happens every year, both of which I think the local music scene bucks against in a way. The emphasis here is song writing, lyrical breeziness, chugging guitars, strong and direct drum patterns, low voices singing sad songs, sort of rock-crooning. Music time is like social story time. It's relegated to a social act. In NYC, certainly it was social, and certainly the music was a glimpse of story from each artist, but it was more about gathering sounds and ideas from the mess of culture, and about standing out and the prevalence of a business mindset there made for a really dynamic scene.
Anyway, learning these things has taught me lots about my own musical impulses, where some of my sensibilities come from, why I felt initially really alienated here in Indiana... Design seems less subjective to me right now, probably because I wasn't part of a design community in NYC except for my devotion to certain design websites and books and films, all of which I've brought with me here to the Mid-West. Music and Design are both conversations.
With regard to your music - do you have any particular goals or ambitions you'd like to aim for?Well, I have a trajectory, for sure. I released a lot of stuff in the last 12 months. I think I sort of had to to get over some ideas of preciousness or protection and to get used to working with other people. And it's been very good for me -- working on the remixes was a terrific and rewarding experience, and I gained some friendships from the experience too! And recording new versions of some of the songs off of
Heavy Ghost (Pigs, Wig, Braid of Voices, Around the Lion Legs...) made for good experiments in production and performance. I hope other people find the EPs valuable, as I do, but I expect the best part about doing those was sort of forcing myself to continue to work on music without letting anxiety over a next album's direction take hold. I know I'm bucking a trend here, but the album is still the most important form to me. It's a large form but it needs to be dealt with one moment at a time. When you're so focused on writing a large piece, it's easy to forget to make each song speak on its own. So that's where I'm at. That and I have some collaborations in the works.
Can you elaborate on those collaborations?They're music related... Can't say more than that. Oh, well, I can say I'm singing, and writing lyrics. And I can say "The Lodge."
{Buy Heavy Ghost. I have no idea what 'the lodge' is, unfortunately. But it sounds great.}
