INTERVIEW: The pAper chAse
I phoned John Congleton a long time ago for this interview. I hope his publicist doesn't strangle me:
I caught the Pitchfork review earlier this week and was wondering what you thought of the whole ‘post-punk/emo’ label?
Congleton: Well, I pretty much firmly disagree with anyone calling the paper chase an emo band, or really most of the titles people try to pin on us are not exactly apt, in my opinion. Especially emo. I have no idea what people mean when they call us that. The kind of stuff that was pegged as emo in the mid-90s has absolutely no sonic affiliation whatsoever with what people are calling emo now. I think in a lot of ways you can draw comparisons between what emo is now as to what 20 years ago glam metal was. I think that, basically, it’s going to be the brunt of a lot of jokes later on. It’s the brunt of a lot of jokes right now, but I think that it’ll be the butt of a lot of jokes later on. Glam metal was an awful bastardization of something really cool that happened with metal. There were a lot of great and talented metal bands and whatnot. I think that there were a lot of great and talented bands that were pegged emotional hardcore or emo. Right now you have these prefabricated, awful bands that are basically put together because they look good—a nice little meat package. The only people buying these records are underage people, just like the only people buying hair metal were underage girls and guys who wanted to get with those girls.
It’s weird to see the development of the word ‘emo’ and how it’s gone from describing bands like Rites of Spring, Sunny Day Real Estate, and even up through At The Drive-In, it seems like there’s two parallel lines of what emo is and what it has become.
Congleton: Yeah, I mean I try not to devote too much energy to that kinda stuff because it’s just one of those things you have to deal with. The main thing that I don’t like about that word whenever it’s associated with us is that it affiliates us with bands that I think are really fucking terrible and really have no business in the artistic community. To put it nicely.
Tell me how you really feel…
Congleton: I feel strongly about that. I think a lot of those bands should go get fucked.
Are there contemporary bands you are into at all?
Congleton: Sure. A lot of the bands we’re talking about right now I don’t consider to be our peers. They’re on a different wavelength entirely. A lot of those bands don’t know the experience of what really shitty touring is like. They immediately fall into a situation where they have a really nice van, a really, really good publicist all of a sudden. We’re kind of from a different school. Well not necessarily a different school, but we’re older than a lot of those bands and have experiences that they can’t relate to. Sure, there’s bands out there that I think are doing great stuff. Even if it’s not something I would listen to, I think it’s valid and cool.
You mentioned shitty touring…as the band has progressed have the tours gotten better?
Congleton: Uh…yes. I guess I would say yes. We still aren’t a huge draw. We have places we do really well in, and then we have a lot of places where we draw a really small cult following. That’s OK with us. We were never under the impression that we would be some sort of overnight success, or even a success in the eyes of someone who would see ‘success.’ Success is just doing something genuine and honest and working hard at it. The journey is the destination, as far as that stuff goes.
I’ve seen a lot of people describe your sound as theatrical or dramatic. Do you see that? Is that a conscious decision?
Congleton: I think it’s something that I’ve embraced. I think that maybe possibly whenever people use words like emo that’s what they’re confusing.
Is The Paper Chase a soundtrack to your mind?
Congleton: (Laughs) I guess.
Where do the sounds that you guys craft come from?
Congleton: That’s kind of like asking somebody how they got an accent, you know what I mean? Nobody tries to have an accent. They just open their mouth and that’s the kind of accent they have because of the tonalities they’ve been subject to. You spend your whole life in West Texas, you’re going to have a West Texas accent. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we never tried to get rid of that accent, musically.
I’ve read that the band started out as ‘therapy’ for you. I was just wondering if that’s still how The Paper Chase exists for you?
Congleton: I think that music and art is always therapy. No matter what.
You guys are from Texas. What’s it like having lived under George W. Bush longer than any of the rest of the country?
Congleton: First of all he was Lt. Governor, which meant he really didn’t have any power. In Texas, that’s the way it kinda runs. To be completely honest, when he was governor it was one of those things you didn’t really think about because it didn’t really affect anything. The one thing I can vividly remember going, “Jesus, what a jackoff” was when he really loosened restrictions on pollution in Texas, so Texas really quickly became a really dirty state when he was governor.
Do you ever think of leaving at all?
Congleton: Uh, what time is it? Every day.
The state, the country or both?
Congleton: The state.
It’s one of the states I’ve never really been to. I’ve driven through the top once and landed in an airport there once. Is it as bad as everyone stereotypes it to be?
Congleton: No, it’s not. It’s just like any place. It’s got its good and its bad. When you’re from a place you get to see the good things about it, but you get to see the bad things really up close. I think a lot of people, when they talk bad about Texas they’re just generalizing. Here’s the deal. Texas is a huge state, right, so you’ve got three major cities: Dallas, Houston and Austin. In the cities you have dynamic, sophisticated people. A lot of Democrats, actually. A lot of people who don’t like where this country’s going. The problem is everyone regards Texas as a red state, and it is a red state because you’ve got all this flyover country with all the small towns and the small-minded people. Those people vote Republican. There you go. what you have ultimately is a red state. But if you live in the major cities, especially Austin—I mean Austin is a complete oasis in the middle of Texas. You would think you were in Berkeley.
Back to the music. I was reading an older interview with you where you laughed off a comparison to Bright Eyes, and I was wondering if there are other contemporary bands you get lumped in with and you shake your head at?
Congleton: Not really. I know a lot of people have compared us Cursive. The funny thing about the Cursive comparison is those guys were big Paper Chase fans and we did a tour together back when they weren’t drawing all that many people. To me, anything people might be picking up from us as far as Cursive goes, Cursive maybe got from us. I can’t say that for sure. I can tell you I think Cursive is a good band and good guys and I’m happy to see that they’re doing well, but I think it’s preposterous for people to say we knocked off stuff from Cursive. That’s completely illogical and stupid for people to say that. I may be wrong in saying that they were influenced by us at all, but I think that people are really wrong to assume we knocked off something from Cursive. We’re two bands that liked each other a lot and basically shared the same ideals. That band happened to be on Saddle Creek and we happened to be on Kill Rock Stars. They got more exposure.
Do you ever grow frustrated with where The Paper Chase stands in the public eye or anything?
Congleton: No. That’s an exercise in futility. We’ve been doing it a long time and if I was going to get frustrated by something like that I would have quit already.
What keeps you going?
Congleton: It’s just a compulsion. Who knows what makes anybody do anything? The people that are fans of The Paper Chase are pretty tried and true, so that helps a lot.
How long do you see The Paper Chase lasting?
Congleton: What time is it? I dunno man. I have no idea. I thought that it would have stopped by now.
I caught the Pitchfork review earlier this week and was wondering what you thought of the whole ‘post-punk/emo’ label?
Congleton: Well, I pretty much firmly disagree with anyone calling the paper chase an emo band, or really most of the titles people try to pin on us are not exactly apt, in my opinion. Especially emo. I have no idea what people mean when they call us that. The kind of stuff that was pegged as emo in the mid-90s has absolutely no sonic affiliation whatsoever with what people are calling emo now. I think in a lot of ways you can draw comparisons between what emo is now as to what 20 years ago glam metal was. I think that, basically, it’s going to be the brunt of a lot of jokes later on. It’s the brunt of a lot of jokes right now, but I think that it’ll be the butt of a lot of jokes later on. Glam metal was an awful bastardization of something really cool that happened with metal. There were a lot of great and talented metal bands and whatnot. I think that there were a lot of great and talented bands that were pegged emotional hardcore or emo. Right now you have these prefabricated, awful bands that are basically put together because they look good—a nice little meat package. The only people buying these records are underage people, just like the only people buying hair metal were underage girls and guys who wanted to get with those girls.
It’s weird to see the development of the word ‘emo’ and how it’s gone from describing bands like Rites of Spring, Sunny Day Real Estate, and even up through At The Drive-In, it seems like there’s two parallel lines of what emo is and what it has become.
Congleton: Yeah, I mean I try not to devote too much energy to that kinda stuff because it’s just one of those things you have to deal with. The main thing that I don’t like about that word whenever it’s associated with us is that it affiliates us with bands that I think are really fucking terrible and really have no business in the artistic community. To put it nicely.
Tell me how you really feel…
Congleton: I feel strongly about that. I think a lot of those bands should go get fucked.
Are there contemporary bands you are into at all?
Congleton: Sure. A lot of the bands we’re talking about right now I don’t consider to be our peers. They’re on a different wavelength entirely. A lot of those bands don’t know the experience of what really shitty touring is like. They immediately fall into a situation where they have a really nice van, a really, really good publicist all of a sudden. We’re kind of from a different school. Well not necessarily a different school, but we’re older than a lot of those bands and have experiences that they can’t relate to. Sure, there’s bands out there that I think are doing great stuff. Even if it’s not something I would listen to, I think it’s valid and cool.
You mentioned shitty touring…as the band has progressed have the tours gotten better?
Congleton: Uh…yes. I guess I would say yes. We still aren’t a huge draw. We have places we do really well in, and then we have a lot of places where we draw a really small cult following. That’s OK with us. We were never under the impression that we would be some sort of overnight success, or even a success in the eyes of someone who would see ‘success.’ Success is just doing something genuine and honest and working hard at it. The journey is the destination, as far as that stuff goes.
I’ve seen a lot of people describe your sound as theatrical or dramatic. Do you see that? Is that a conscious decision?
Congleton: I think it’s something that I’ve embraced. I think that maybe possibly whenever people use words like emo that’s what they’re confusing.
Is The Paper Chase a soundtrack to your mind?
Congleton: (Laughs) I guess.
Where do the sounds that you guys craft come from?
Congleton: That’s kind of like asking somebody how they got an accent, you know what I mean? Nobody tries to have an accent. They just open their mouth and that’s the kind of accent they have because of the tonalities they’ve been subject to. You spend your whole life in West Texas, you’re going to have a West Texas accent. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we never tried to get rid of that accent, musically.
I’ve read that the band started out as ‘therapy’ for you. I was just wondering if that’s still how The Paper Chase exists for you?
Congleton: I think that music and art is always therapy. No matter what.
You guys are from Texas. What’s it like having lived under George W. Bush longer than any of the rest of the country?
Congleton: First of all he was Lt. Governor, which meant he really didn’t have any power. In Texas, that’s the way it kinda runs. To be completely honest, when he was governor it was one of those things you didn’t really think about because it didn’t really affect anything. The one thing I can vividly remember going, “Jesus, what a jackoff” was when he really loosened restrictions on pollution in Texas, so Texas really quickly became a really dirty state when he was governor.
Do you ever think of leaving at all?
Congleton: Uh, what time is it? Every day.
The state, the country or both?
Congleton: The state.
It’s one of the states I’ve never really been to. I’ve driven through the top once and landed in an airport there once. Is it as bad as everyone stereotypes it to be?
Congleton: No, it’s not. It’s just like any place. It’s got its good and its bad. When you’re from a place you get to see the good things about it, but you get to see the bad things really up close. I think a lot of people, when they talk bad about Texas they’re just generalizing. Here’s the deal. Texas is a huge state, right, so you’ve got three major cities: Dallas, Houston and Austin. In the cities you have dynamic, sophisticated people. A lot of Democrats, actually. A lot of people who don’t like where this country’s going. The problem is everyone regards Texas as a red state, and it is a red state because you’ve got all this flyover country with all the small towns and the small-minded people. Those people vote Republican. There you go. what you have ultimately is a red state. But if you live in the major cities, especially Austin—I mean Austin is a complete oasis in the middle of Texas. You would think you were in Berkeley.
Back to the music. I was reading an older interview with you where you laughed off a comparison to Bright Eyes, and I was wondering if there are other contemporary bands you get lumped in with and you shake your head at?
Congleton: Not really. I know a lot of people have compared us Cursive. The funny thing about the Cursive comparison is those guys were big Paper Chase fans and we did a tour together back when they weren’t drawing all that many people. To me, anything people might be picking up from us as far as Cursive goes, Cursive maybe got from us. I can’t say that for sure. I can tell you I think Cursive is a good band and good guys and I’m happy to see that they’re doing well, but I think it’s preposterous for people to say we knocked off stuff from Cursive. That’s completely illogical and stupid for people to say that. I may be wrong in saying that they were influenced by us at all, but I think that people are really wrong to assume we knocked off something from Cursive. We’re two bands that liked each other a lot and basically shared the same ideals. That band happened to be on Saddle Creek and we happened to be on Kill Rock Stars. They got more exposure.
Do you ever grow frustrated with where The Paper Chase stands in the public eye or anything?
Congleton: No. That’s an exercise in futility. We’ve been doing it a long time and if I was going to get frustrated by something like that I would have quit already.
What keeps you going?
Congleton: It’s just a compulsion. Who knows what makes anybody do anything? The people that are fans of The Paper Chase are pretty tried and true, so that helps a lot.
How long do you see The Paper Chase lasting?
Congleton: What time is it? I dunno man. I have no idea. I thought that it would have stopped by now.
posted by Jeremiah at 11:31 AM
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