As one-half of the pop duo They Might Be Giants, John Linnell has been responsible for saving the world from the pretentions of boring, commonplace pop music more times than he can count. Now another slice of salvation has hit store shelves: State Songs, sixteen songs about sixteen U.S. states. We recently had a chance to chat with Linnell about his own favorite states, his songwriting methods and the trials and tribulations of recording carousel band organs.
What made you want to return to this project?
Well, that's a good question. It is one of those things where it might have died a quiet death. I put out five of the songs on the Hello CD thing, and then I've been merrily busy with They Might Be Giants stuff ever since then. There was nothing really compelling me in the direction of putting out this record, except that I thought it might be a nice thing to do one of these days. I'm just a very lazy person, so I wasn't really making much headway into doing anything. Then at some point last year, our manager managed to cut a deal with Rounder Records, and they were very interested in doing this project. That finally got me interested in it again. They wanted to put out one CD at least of the State Songs. That seemed like a great, attractive idea, and I just worked as hard as I could in between the cracks of all the They Might Be Giants stuff I've been doing in the last year. I managed to put together the record pretty much myself; I got Pat Dillett to mix it, but I did most of the engineering myself and most of the leg work. It kind of opened my eyes up to the fact that John [Flansburgh] and I have a lot of help usually in getting stuff done, and actually John does a lot of the work, so having to do it all myself was a real eye-opener for me.
How did you find working alone as opposed to collaborating with John?
It's different. I found out that I could do it, and there were certain things that I wanted to do that it was really up to me to get together. Nobody was telling me, or even asking me, to do some of the things I did for this record, the most notable being the recording of the carousel organs, which was a crazy amount of work--contacting the people who punch the rolls for the organs and cooking up a deal to do that. Then writing the music and second-guessing how it was gonna sound, and then setting up the recording, which of course had to be a remote recording. I'm not a genius engineer, but I had to whip the thing up completely. It was a real education for me. I would definitely do it differently if I were doing it again. But I'm really happy with the result.
It definitely sounds great. Where did you record the organs--did you go to an actual carnival?
There are two on the record, actually. One of them is in a person's home in Long Island. He has a small--by their standards--carousel organ. It's the size of a couple of washing machines stacked up. He just is really into it; he not only owns it, but he cuts rolls for it and writes arrangements for other people's band organs. So he was able to help me put together the roll for that, and then the other one is an enormous carousel organ inside a merry-go-round in a park in the Washington D.C. area, in Maryland. That was a much more elaborate thing, because I used about eight different mikes. I probably could have used more, but I only had eight tracks to record on. It was this machine that had hundreds of pipes, a kick drum, snare drum, triangle, castanets, glockenspiel and lots of little doo-dads. That was pretty fun. [laughs]
It sounds like a lot of work. Were you ever daunted at any point?
Yeah, I think there was a point when I was on the verge of chickening out, and I basically just forced myself. Part of it was just dealing with the people involved--I thought, what if they just think I'm insane? I guess the more realistic concern was that they wouldn't understand what I was trying to do, and they would screw it up in some way. I have to say that the guy that I worked with in Long Island was very, very conscientious. I sent him a cassette in addition to the music, and he was very careful about making the music that the band organ played sound as much like the cassette as possible. I think he had a better grip musically on what it was that I was trying to do. There were a lot of mistakes on the other one that I didn't have the resources or the time to correct, so there's just some wrong notes that you hear on the larger carousel organ.
How did you pick the states?
I think in a lot of cases, the name of the state suggested the music, and then the lyrics grew out of the music. The thing about this project is that I've kind of worked on all fifty states simultaneously. I would pick up the accordion or sit at the piano and arbitrarily pick a state out and then try to come up with the music for it. Often the lyrics would wind up not really having anything to do with the state. Not just often--on every single track. On every occasion, the lyrics don't have anything to do with the state. But that is the nature of the project--it's not an educational project. There are liner notes on the actual record cover that will have real-life information about the states, so I capitulated on that. It was too good to resist, listing all the state birds and stuff. I just thought I really needed to do that to make it more official.
Did you have any friends lobbying for certain states at any point?
No, I really made these decisions on my own. One thing is I haven't really tackled any of the big states yet, any of the ones where I've lived or the ones that are big population centers I've left out so far. That will be Volume 2 or Volume 3, I guess.
Excellent. You've got some big guns left.
Absolutely. All the big guns. Texas, New York, California, Florida.
The mind reels. You've done a lot of touring, obviously--what's your favorite state?
Well, this is a really pat answer, but it happens that today we're in Madison, Wisconsin, and I love the city of Madison. It's a very pleasant place. Today is a beautiful day. It's the perfect day to be here--there's autumn leaves here, but it's not as cold as you'd expect for this time of year. I just love it up here. I think Wisconsin generally is a pretty great place. But I haven't done the Wisconsin song yet.
Sounds like it could be a pretty favorable tune.
We'll see. I'm trying to keep my own feelings out of it. For example, there's a song called "Oregon is bad," and I really don't feel that way personally. It's strictly a work of fiction.
How does songwriting work for you? Do you approach it lyrically first, or musically?
It can go either way. Ideally, the best thing is to come up with both at the same time. Usually that means the idea is gonna hang together the best, if it all happens at once, but you can't always get what you want. I more often start with just the music and the lyrics come later. For that reason, the lyrics have to be a little oblique in order to fit into the melody that I've cooked up.
What kind of stuff are you listening to right now?
I don't listen to very much music. We've been on tour for about four weeks now. On the bus we have this satellite thing, and in addition to all the TV channels, there's also about a hundred different radio channels, which are just programmed music that comes through the satellite. We have this game that we play on the bus. For some reason, the title and artist information doesn't come in until about twenty seconds after the song starts, so everybody tries to be the first one to figure out the title and artist. We've actually been laying money down, trying to make it interesting. One of the stations is the Sounds of the Seventies. Surprisingly, as it turns out, our drummer is the one who almost always wins. He can hear the first drumbeat or the first little guitar sound in a song and instantly name the title and the artist. Everyone else just has to roll over.
That's quite a gift.
It is a gift.
What's going on with the Giants? You guys are touring now...when's the next record coming out, or the children's record?
The children's record will be out next year, and if all goes well, we'll have a Giants record out next year too. In the meantime, we're very busy doing the incidental music for this TV show called Malcom in the Middle. That's what we've been working on. That's a bunch of stuff; that's what we'll be doing when we get home, mostly. I'll also be going out and playing shows on my own. I'm really looking forward to that. We've actually spent a lot of time in Chicago this year, so I'm getting to feel very comfortable.
It's your kind of town.
It is totally my kind of town. Actually, I have my bicycle on the road--I stow it under the bus where the luggage goes, and I did a lot of biking in the past week. I biked down State Street, where all the historic architecture is, all the Louis Sullivans and stuff. I'd never been down there; that was cool. It's a great biking town coming from New York, which is more hilly and where the traffic is a little more hairy. Chicago is a great place to bike around, because you can get all over the place very easily.
They just refurbished all that area down by State Street. They're talking about putting in a 400-screen movie theater down there.
Do you think four hundred is enough?
I think you can never have too many. Especially when they're just the size of your TV.