September 2004 October 2004 November 2004
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Could this be the first semi-serious interview from Lincoln Live Music? Most likely if I'm interviewing Zane from everyone's favorite bands, Boycaught, Hawking Missions, and Full Metal Fetus. But today, we talked about his solo venture that simply goes by the name of Zane. Chilling in his attic/bedroom, sharing some Samuel Smith's India Pale Ales, Zane allowed me to listen to a couple of his newest recordings entitled ".2 Second Frame" and "Call Me Tonight". He would have played me some songs live, but it turns out Josh was passed out downstairs (or was he?).
The opening line to ".2 Second Frame" went as follows. "I'm sorry I don't have any plans, but my life changes every .2 second frame and yours doesn't sound so great to me." The guitar part is a strumming ballad of sorts. "Call Me Tonight" is a song Zane wrote the day before and had recorded that afternoon. A completely unfinished recording, but there nonetheless. The overdubbed vocals seemed to spiral around each other.
Zane is full of so many ideas, that I changed the format of this interview into just paragraph form for easier reading. The following interview picks up the conversation after we listened to some of his demos. Please enjoy.
Zane
Basically, you can tell "Call Me Tonight" has got this pop, Beatles influence. But I think the real shtick behind it is the fact that the lyrics are so fucking brutal, you know. One thing that I really give a shit about, and I really listen for when I am listening to music, is the lyrics. And I think that one thing that soft music does not represent upon is the reality of living, and the harshness of living through this life. Granted, like sometimes soft music can represent things that are really horrible in your life, you know.
But that song is about just how you're living through this routine, and somebody calls you up and kind of perpetuates that idea of living through that routine whether it be boyfriend, girlfriend, friend. And that routine is carried out through addiction and your own fucking ideas of what your existence or reality should be. We all kind of make up our own idea on how we are going to work in this fucking world. Basically it's all jargon.
Everybody's screwed up, man. Everybody's just fucked up. The more you realize it, the better off you probably are, but nobody realizes it. I think that the fact that I've been playing punk rock for so long, and I've been playing fast stuff, and I've been playing Hawking Missions, that it does represent through my faster stuff.
And I write a lot, and I talk a lot, I have lyrics about marriage. Because marriage is one of those institutional ideologies that is just falling apart. I mean it is just a complete microcosm for the big picture of what's happening. All of our institutions here in the United States, and like Christianity, is just falling apart, man. And we're trying to not realize it through these 50-60% divorce rates. We're like, "No, it's okay! Just keep getting married, we need to have a Defensive Marriage Act!". But the reality of the situation is like, listen man, people are getting divorced because they shouldn't have fucking got married. Because marriage is just not working.
So that's kind of my stance on the whole bit. I don't know if it's going to work, or if it's even working for me. I'm pretty objective about whatever I'm going to deal with, you know. I don't know anything, I don't have any answers, I'm just a guy that sits in his attic and drinks, and that's all there is to it.
I like playing shows, I like playing solo shows, I like doing it by myself. I've been asked to play a few bars like Duffy's and stuff like that. But, you know, I just don't know if I'm down yet, I really like the basement scene. I had a show like a month ago that was in a basement, and there were like 150 people there. It was just packed, and there was just this great energy, everybody was feeling it. I felt really good just talking to them, and kind of telling everybody what I was trying to sing about, and what I was trying to do. It was feeling way better than if I was up on some fucking stage, you know, and I had lights down on me, I got this microphone in front of my face. I feel better with six foot ceilings, and a bunch of fucking people crowded around, you know. Face to face. It's really great to be close, I've always enjoyed the closeness, I think that is what the music is all about.
That show was in this girl named Marissa's basement, it was her band's first show. They're called In A Fit. They're kinda this almost........almost........Saddle Creek type of thing, but it was their first show. They're going for the real slow, girl vocals type of sound.
I've been living in Lincoln my entire life. Even though I fucking leave this city all of the time, I get sick of it. There's a lot of things that really plague me about this town, I think that's just because I've lived here for almost 25 years. I still come back, for the rest of my life, I will always love Lincoln. And if I ever, ever, you know, if I ever, and when I do ever do anything as far as music or writing or anything goes, everything sells in Lincoln for way cheaper than it does anywhere else. Just because everyone in Lincoln has supported me my entire life, and helped me out, so I want to help everybody else out.
That's one thing that I have really been disenchanted by, because I used to play with Conor Oberst and Commander Venus. And you know, we used to play with them all of the time back when I was 15 or 16 playing in these ska bands and shit in high school. I really liked all of their ideas, you know, we were playing with Sideshow, and shit, and it was just these really kind of crazy shows to put all of these bands together, but everybody was about the common cause. Playing at the Culture Center, playing at the Silk Cafe, you know, playing at Shake's, these smaller places, and just kind of making the music to make the music.
And then Bright Eyes came about, and I was like that's fucking awesome! Conor's doing his own thing, and the next thing I know, I'm looking for his album and the shit's like ten bucks. And I'm like, Motherfucker! You can't do that up in your own hometown! You sell it for cost in your own hometown. I know he's from Omaha, but even in Lincoln. To charge that much for shows is fucking ludicrous, man! If I am charging any money for shows, and I actually make money on the road, you're damn right I'm coming back to Lincoln and doing the freest show you've ever seen! It's about paying back the people that have been paying you for so long. People have been paying Conor Oberst for shows since he was fucking 14, you know. And what does he do when he gets big? Charges more money for his fucking shows! We remember you from almost 10 years ago, and you're not going to let me in for free? Or charge us three bucks or five bucks or something?
He did do that anti-war benefit up at Sokol Auditorium in Omaha, and that is commendable. He got so many people there, it was great. Why didn't he do it again? Why didn't he come down to Lincoln? He's fucking our age, what's he need all this money for? I mean, shit, we don't have anything, you know. And he can go and play a show and make $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 a show. I have a friend who was in New York and Conor went there and played two sold out shows and the ticket was fucking $33. Easily eight to ten thousand people there per night. First of all, the venue puts you up in a hotel room, you don't even have to pay for that, you just take the money. God-damn man! I can't imagine that shit.
As Zane, really, I've just done one real show, where I put out flyers and said, this is it, this is what's going on. I think there's going to be another one coming up probably in the beginning of October as far as I know. We're trying to set a date right now. It'll be in the same spot, the same basement. I'd like to be playing more shows, but I think it's just a matter of the size of town that this is and how fast people get sick of fucking hearing the same guy play. I'm kind of waiting so I can get a real good base of songs that I really, really enjoy, then put something out, and then really play. I just think that is the way to go.
I probably have got about 18 songs right now. But I want to have like 25 and cut down to about 16 for a CD. Because, you know, a lot of the songs I'm happy with, but at the same time I don't know if I'm completely happy with them. I don't even know if they're finished for sure. "Call Me Tonight" isn't even a quarter of the way finished. I might not even be done with that song for 3 or 4 fucking years, and I might wake up tomorrow and be like, I don't even want to listen to that song ever again, and then I bring it up a couple of years later and just figure it out. It's all a matter of whenever the inspiration hits me.
I'm kind of a flake when it comes to myself, writing my own fucking songs. I'm better when I'm working with people because I've got people there to tell me to get this song done, we need to get this show in order, we need to get this recording done. Everything needs to be tight. I'm like, "Oh, Zane, don't worry about it, you'll get it done later". And I'm just like, "That's perfect, that sounds great! Let's start another song!".
I'd really like to be playing more shows. I think probably late this fall, maybe November, I'd like to do a bar show. Do a Duffy's show, or a good Knickerbockers show. Ideally, I'd like to play with me opening, and then Kevin Chasek, and then an out-of-town, like kind of acoustic group or indie group or whatever, just something softer. Just to kind of set the stage for the music. Not as much as I want to homogenize the sound, I don't want to be a dictator and be like acoustic plays with acoustic. I'd play with Wasteoid if it came down to it! I think that for people's ears, me coming out to Duffy's and playing my first show, I think they'd be like, ok, well, we want to hear some acoustic music, some softer shit.
The stuff that I play live is a lot different than things I put down on recordings. I'll never play "Call Me Tonight" live in my entire life. Never. It's just not my style. To record it, to do it, to have it in my head, it's definitely there, it's definitely real. My real music is where the energy is, and that's fast, that's moving, really belting out some vocals, and really getting the fucking point across, you know.
I'm a full time student. I had two jobs, I just got fired from one of my jobs today. I worked at Open Harvest, the natural foods grocery store. My real job is that I'm a gardener. I go to people's houses. I work for this real small business for this lady. She kind of has this big list of customers, and I kind of go to their houses and plant, weed, or mulch. Really easy stuff, not landscaping. I know her really well and she has only 3 other employees. It's a sweet job.
Other than that, like my reality, my real life is basically consumed by art. I play music all day, whether it be for Boycaught or my solo shit. Sometimes I do some Hawking Missions stuff with Josh. I'm in Full Metal Fetus even though my drummer, Lee, lives in Portland and I live here. We'll send each other ideas back and forth. Since we've been apart for two years, we've written like five new songs. When we meet up, we just put it together, and there it is. I just sit and play metal on my acoustic to practice for it. The way Lee practices, he listens to my tape and just plays on his leg, and then he goes in and records drums, and then send it to back to me as his idea. When we meet up, it's really on, and it just snaps together.
Lee's really good with remembering songs, and so am I. I remember the first song I ever wrote in a band, and I wasn't even the guitarist or the bassist, I was the lead singer. That's how I started. And I remember how to play the guitar parts because I was watching the guitarist play, I was watching the bassist, for all of those songs, and so we kind of work out together in that aspect. We just meet up and just hit it, it's just on.
Right now, I'm also consumed by another project. I'm just about ready to put out a book of some poetry and short fiction. As soon as I make the final edits, and get the cover done, it goes to the printer and then it's done. So within a month I'll have a book out, which I'll be selling in Lincoln for probably, like, you know, whatever people can give me. The price on the book is going to be five or six bucks. The guy who's putting it out hasn't really decided on the set price, but for Lincolnites, especially if I know them, if they really want it, I'll sell it for anything, you know. I just want people to have it if they want it. I don't want people to buy it because they feel it's necessary, if they do want to buy it or read it, check it out. If you have a buck or two, that's what it's going to be.
The title of the book is "Incubation and Fermentation". For the design, I want to have a white outline of a bottle with a green egg inside of the bottle. Something about the processes of like incubation, the warmth of it, and also fermentation, which is also something coming to life.