Post by Darek on May 31, 2008 3:23:37 GMT -5
Link
(also sort of cool that they used one of my pictures from a Stone Church show way back when, that'll teach me to blindly upload them to the PSC site)
The Social Club is back
Written by Matt Kanner
Friday, 30 May 2008
Paranoid front man Dave Gutter tells us what’s new
Despite building an almost cultish following over the last half-decade, Paranoid Social Club sat out most of 2007 while its members worked on other projects. Founded by singer/guitarist Dave Gutter and bassist/keyboardist Jon Roods, the Portland-based band developed as a spawn of Rustic Overtones, which Gutter and Roods started in the early 1990s. The apple, you might say, fell far from the tree. Whereas Rustic featured a dozen or so instrumentalists crowding the stage to play a jazzy funk style, PNC was a raw power trio playing poppy, hard rock and punk tunes with sometimes bawdy lyrics.
Paranoid released its first album, “Axis II,” in 2002 and followed it up with the double-disc “Axis III & I” in 2004. A self-titled national debut emerged on On-Entertainment Records a year later, cementing the band’s reputation throughout New England and beyond. PSC continued to gig through the fall of 2006 but then went mostly dormant for more than a year. But Paranoid is back in 2008, and the trio will be at the Dover Brick House on Friday, May 30. Original drummer Mark Boisvert has been replaced by Rustic drummer Tony McNaboe, and the band’s first album in three years is due out in July or August. The Wire recently chatted with Gutter about the new disc, the upcoming show in Dover and the Paranoid philosophy.
There was a pretty long hiatus of a year-plus where PSC wasn’t playing out very much. What were you guys up to in 2007?
All the guys that are in Paranoid Social Club are also in Rustic Overtones, which got back together last summer, and we’ve been touring with Rustic Overtones for the better part of a year. And, we’re just kind of laying low, working on a new record, as of recently. We’ve been busy doing both groups. People get sick of hearing the same thing everywhere and seeing your face everywhere, so every once in a while we go into hiding and get a new reason for people to be excited about the band.
How have the shows this spring been going? Did it take a little while to get back in the swing of things after doing the Rustic thing for a while?
Well, yeah. With Rustic, we’ve been playing shows that had anywhere between 10 and 25 people onstage, and then Paranoid is just a trio. Sometimes we play with a keyboard player, as well, but for the most part we’re a trio. It’s kind of weird going from having all these instruments to fill in and cover all the sounds, and then go to just being stripped down. That’s quite a bit different. But other than that, it’s a little bit more punk rock with PSC, so it lends itself to being a little bit more ferocious of a live show and kind of breaking the rules a little bit more than Rustic.
You and Jon Roods have been playing together since you were kids, pretty much, and helped found Rustic Overtones together, and now you’ve been playing together with Paranoid Social Club for a good six years or so. Is that collaboration still fresh and inspired to you?
Oh yeah. We’re also roommates, too. Yeah, we’ve been playing together since we were like nine years old, and I’ve actually never been onstage with anyone else playing bass other than Jon, even when we do little impromptu gigs and side projects and stuff like that. We always kind of stick together.
Rustic Overtones became such a popular and well-known band in the greater Portland area, and it sounds like a lot of the members, including you and Jon and also Spencer Albee (As Fast As) eventually felt the need to escape the confines of that Rustic typecast and do something else. Did Paranoid Social Club serve as a release for you guys from the Rustic mold?
Yeah. I mean, we don’t really pigeonhole the Rustic sound, but at the same time there’s some stuff that doesn’t quite fit Rustic as far as instrumentation. If you get a song that’s like guitar-based and drums and it sounds really full and good, you don’t usually add anything else to it. With Rustic, we all tend to kind of lay back and make room for all the different instruments, and the arrangements are much different. Paranoid is way more straight-ahead, you know, like a band like The Ramones or something. It’s just more guitar-based, drums, power trio. There’s more stripped-down stuff we usually use for Paranoid, and if it’s something that we think would benefit from a bigger arrangement, kind of a larger song, we use that stuff with Rustic. But it is kind of a weird position, because I’ll write a song and I’ll be like, “Should this be a Paranoid song or should it be a Rustic song?” That’s kind of just how we do it. When Rustic disbanded, lyrically and vocally, I tried to do something a little bit different with Paranoid, just so it wouldn’t seem like we were trying to be Rustic Overtones Junior or ride on the coattails of that success. We tried to just kind of develop our own sound. So usually, when I come up with a lyric, it’s a little bit more tongue-in-cheek. If it’s a little bit more rambunctious, that’ll tend to be Paranoid, and then the more introspective side of our songwriting usually lends itself more to Rustic. It definitely allows me to write with no boundaries on what kind of song I want to do or what style of music.
It seems like the Paranoid lyrics are often humorous observations on everyday kind of issues. Is it a goal of the band to write songs and lyrics that people can easily relate to?
Yup, exactly. The songs for Paranoid are much more literal. They’re kind of more like I’m writing for the listener rather than writing for myself. Not that that alienates the listener, but it’s just two different styles, and rather than throw them into one group and have a confusing record, I think it’s better to keep them separate. I have a lot of fun with the lyrics for Paranoid. They’re about everyday things, and the Rustic lyrics I approach more like poetry. But there are definitely similarities and we do cross the lines between the two groups in some songs. But things have to be balanced between the two different styles.
Paranoid Social Club has amassed a lot of really loyal fans, so that it almost does seem like a club, of sorts. Can you describe the relationship between the band and its fans?
We’ve always been the kind of guys that try to be humble, and we really appreciate our fans, for the most part. We’ve been doing this for 10 or 12 years, and we see some of the same people coming out to shows that came 10 years ago, that being Rustic, and with Paranoid it shares a lot of the same fan base. We go out after the show and go out and chill and have some drinks with the fans and talk to them about stuff. Some people ask us about songs and we just have a conversation and chill out with our fans, and I think that’s really important. I think a lot of bands, in trying to be rock stars or whatever, they tend to alienate their fans a little bit, but we just try to be like regular guys. Like anything, if you’re trying to sell anything it’s always good to be cordial and respectful to the people that are supporting you, and I don’t see why that should be different in rock and roll. They’re literally why I am able to pay my rent. That is the sole reason, is because we have fans that support us.
Are you guys signed to a label right now?
We’re on On-Entertainment for Paranoid Social Club, and it’s distributed by EMI, and it’s just an indie label. We tend to gravitate towards those more than trying to beat our heads against the wall with a major label, especially right now. It’s kind of a weird time for majors. They’re all kind of scrambling around trying to figure out how you make money when people get music for free on the Internet, which I think is the best thing that ever happened to music because it brings it back to the live show, it brings it back to the essence.
Can you tell me a little more about the new album? Have you been in the studio recording?
Yup. We just built a studio here in Portland, and it’s gonna serve as sort of a factory for all the side projects and Rustic, as well. We’re also working on a new Rustic record. We just take it one song at a time, and right now we’re probably like five songs deep on a new record. It sounds totally different than any of our other stuff, but that’s because we’re in a different spot every time we go into the studio. If you go in and say, “OK, we need a record like the last one. I need a song that sounds like our last song that was successful,” you kind of end up chasing your tail and doing an impression of yourself. So we just go in and write some songs. If it goes in a certain direction we kind of run with it. It’s not really the type of thing you can premeditate as to what the record should be like. It usually takes on a life of its own once you start recording. So far, the new record’s a mix of very loud rock stuff and then the opposite end, like really melancholy stripped down stuff. We’ll see how those work together (laughs).
Have you been testing out the new songs at live shows?
No, we’re trying to keep it a secret. It’s tough because we haven’t put out a new record in a little while and we want to, but it’s always nice to have people hear the songs the first time when they put the CD in the player. From time to time we’ll do some songs that we’ve been messing around with for years that will be on the new record, but as far as the new stuff we’re writing, we’re gonna kind of keep that under wraps.
Paranoid Social Club will be at the Dover Brick House, 2 Orchard St., Dover, 603-749-3838, on Friday, May 30 at 8 p.m., along with Sidecar Radio. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 day of show.
(also sort of cool that they used one of my pictures from a Stone Church show way back when, that'll teach me to blindly upload them to the PSC site)
The Social Club is back
Written by Matt Kanner
Friday, 30 May 2008
Paranoid front man Dave Gutter tells us what’s new
Despite building an almost cultish following over the last half-decade, Paranoid Social Club sat out most of 2007 while its members worked on other projects. Founded by singer/guitarist Dave Gutter and bassist/keyboardist Jon Roods, the Portland-based band developed as a spawn of Rustic Overtones, which Gutter and Roods started in the early 1990s. The apple, you might say, fell far from the tree. Whereas Rustic featured a dozen or so instrumentalists crowding the stage to play a jazzy funk style, PNC was a raw power trio playing poppy, hard rock and punk tunes with sometimes bawdy lyrics.
Paranoid released its first album, “Axis II,” in 2002 and followed it up with the double-disc “Axis III & I” in 2004. A self-titled national debut emerged on On-Entertainment Records a year later, cementing the band’s reputation throughout New England and beyond. PSC continued to gig through the fall of 2006 but then went mostly dormant for more than a year. But Paranoid is back in 2008, and the trio will be at the Dover Brick House on Friday, May 30. Original drummer Mark Boisvert has been replaced by Rustic drummer Tony McNaboe, and the band’s first album in three years is due out in July or August. The Wire recently chatted with Gutter about the new disc, the upcoming show in Dover and the Paranoid philosophy.
There was a pretty long hiatus of a year-plus where PSC wasn’t playing out very much. What were you guys up to in 2007?
All the guys that are in Paranoid Social Club are also in Rustic Overtones, which got back together last summer, and we’ve been touring with Rustic Overtones for the better part of a year. And, we’re just kind of laying low, working on a new record, as of recently. We’ve been busy doing both groups. People get sick of hearing the same thing everywhere and seeing your face everywhere, so every once in a while we go into hiding and get a new reason for people to be excited about the band.
How have the shows this spring been going? Did it take a little while to get back in the swing of things after doing the Rustic thing for a while?
Well, yeah. With Rustic, we’ve been playing shows that had anywhere between 10 and 25 people onstage, and then Paranoid is just a trio. Sometimes we play with a keyboard player, as well, but for the most part we’re a trio. It’s kind of weird going from having all these instruments to fill in and cover all the sounds, and then go to just being stripped down. That’s quite a bit different. But other than that, it’s a little bit more punk rock with PSC, so it lends itself to being a little bit more ferocious of a live show and kind of breaking the rules a little bit more than Rustic.
You and Jon Roods have been playing together since you were kids, pretty much, and helped found Rustic Overtones together, and now you’ve been playing together with Paranoid Social Club for a good six years or so. Is that collaboration still fresh and inspired to you?
Oh yeah. We’re also roommates, too. Yeah, we’ve been playing together since we were like nine years old, and I’ve actually never been onstage with anyone else playing bass other than Jon, even when we do little impromptu gigs and side projects and stuff like that. We always kind of stick together.
Rustic Overtones became such a popular and well-known band in the greater Portland area, and it sounds like a lot of the members, including you and Jon and also Spencer Albee (As Fast As) eventually felt the need to escape the confines of that Rustic typecast and do something else. Did Paranoid Social Club serve as a release for you guys from the Rustic mold?
Yeah. I mean, we don’t really pigeonhole the Rustic sound, but at the same time there’s some stuff that doesn’t quite fit Rustic as far as instrumentation. If you get a song that’s like guitar-based and drums and it sounds really full and good, you don’t usually add anything else to it. With Rustic, we all tend to kind of lay back and make room for all the different instruments, and the arrangements are much different. Paranoid is way more straight-ahead, you know, like a band like The Ramones or something. It’s just more guitar-based, drums, power trio. There’s more stripped-down stuff we usually use for Paranoid, and if it’s something that we think would benefit from a bigger arrangement, kind of a larger song, we use that stuff with Rustic. But it is kind of a weird position, because I’ll write a song and I’ll be like, “Should this be a Paranoid song or should it be a Rustic song?” That’s kind of just how we do it. When Rustic disbanded, lyrically and vocally, I tried to do something a little bit different with Paranoid, just so it wouldn’t seem like we were trying to be Rustic Overtones Junior or ride on the coattails of that success. We tried to just kind of develop our own sound. So usually, when I come up with a lyric, it’s a little bit more tongue-in-cheek. If it’s a little bit more rambunctious, that’ll tend to be Paranoid, and then the more introspective side of our songwriting usually lends itself more to Rustic. It definitely allows me to write with no boundaries on what kind of song I want to do or what style of music.
It seems like the Paranoid lyrics are often humorous observations on everyday kind of issues. Is it a goal of the band to write songs and lyrics that people can easily relate to?
Yup, exactly. The songs for Paranoid are much more literal. They’re kind of more like I’m writing for the listener rather than writing for myself. Not that that alienates the listener, but it’s just two different styles, and rather than throw them into one group and have a confusing record, I think it’s better to keep them separate. I have a lot of fun with the lyrics for Paranoid. They’re about everyday things, and the Rustic lyrics I approach more like poetry. But there are definitely similarities and we do cross the lines between the two groups in some songs. But things have to be balanced between the two different styles.
Paranoid Social Club has amassed a lot of really loyal fans, so that it almost does seem like a club, of sorts. Can you describe the relationship between the band and its fans?
We’ve always been the kind of guys that try to be humble, and we really appreciate our fans, for the most part. We’ve been doing this for 10 or 12 years, and we see some of the same people coming out to shows that came 10 years ago, that being Rustic, and with Paranoid it shares a lot of the same fan base. We go out after the show and go out and chill and have some drinks with the fans and talk to them about stuff. Some people ask us about songs and we just have a conversation and chill out with our fans, and I think that’s really important. I think a lot of bands, in trying to be rock stars or whatever, they tend to alienate their fans a little bit, but we just try to be like regular guys. Like anything, if you’re trying to sell anything it’s always good to be cordial and respectful to the people that are supporting you, and I don’t see why that should be different in rock and roll. They’re literally why I am able to pay my rent. That is the sole reason, is because we have fans that support us.
Are you guys signed to a label right now?
We’re on On-Entertainment for Paranoid Social Club, and it’s distributed by EMI, and it’s just an indie label. We tend to gravitate towards those more than trying to beat our heads against the wall with a major label, especially right now. It’s kind of a weird time for majors. They’re all kind of scrambling around trying to figure out how you make money when people get music for free on the Internet, which I think is the best thing that ever happened to music because it brings it back to the live show, it brings it back to the essence.
Can you tell me a little more about the new album? Have you been in the studio recording?
Yup. We just built a studio here in Portland, and it’s gonna serve as sort of a factory for all the side projects and Rustic, as well. We’re also working on a new Rustic record. We just take it one song at a time, and right now we’re probably like five songs deep on a new record. It sounds totally different than any of our other stuff, but that’s because we’re in a different spot every time we go into the studio. If you go in and say, “OK, we need a record like the last one. I need a song that sounds like our last song that was successful,” you kind of end up chasing your tail and doing an impression of yourself. So we just go in and write some songs. If it goes in a certain direction we kind of run with it. It’s not really the type of thing you can premeditate as to what the record should be like. It usually takes on a life of its own once you start recording. So far, the new record’s a mix of very loud rock stuff and then the opposite end, like really melancholy stripped down stuff. We’ll see how those work together (laughs).
Have you been testing out the new songs at live shows?
No, we’re trying to keep it a secret. It’s tough because we haven’t put out a new record in a little while and we want to, but it’s always nice to have people hear the songs the first time when they put the CD in the player. From time to time we’ll do some songs that we’ve been messing around with for years that will be on the new record, but as far as the new stuff we’re writing, we’re gonna kind of keep that under wraps.
Paranoid Social Club will be at the Dover Brick House, 2 Orchard St., Dover, 603-749-3838, on Friday, May 30 at 8 p.m., along with Sidecar Radio. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 day of show.
