On a 4 day break before touring with The Meat Puppets, Brantley and I connected via phone call for a 20 minute interview about Dead Confederate's
release of their first full length album Wrecking Ball. We discussed everything from his favorite song on the album (which inspired a
painting) to Brantley's advice on getting a puppy!
Target Audience Magazine:
As one of the main songwriters for Dead Confederate, do you feel that when you play each song you need to be in a specific emotional state? In other
words, when you perform each song what do you think about?
Brantley Senn:
Hardy and I are both minded about that. You kinda can't help but think about the things you write about when you play them live. Even if I'm not trying
to think about it, songs like “Flesh Colored Canvas” can kinda bring up some old emotions and stuff. Most of the time, I try to focus on the music, but
a lot of times emotions do come up. It's not something I do so much consciously. I probably used to more; when the songs were more fresh I would think
about it more deeply than now, but after touring so much and doing hundreds of shows a year you get to a point where you focus on making each show the
best you can, playing the best...
TAM: That's part of the question, when you're up on stage playing say, “The Rat”, a song that's your single and you've played a dozen times before,
do you have to get yourself in some kind of mental place as opposed to when you're playing a different track or a happier tune?
BS: Right, I think there is an element of that but I'm not sure if it's so much forced as it occurs naturally. Sometimes the negative songs come out
more strongly if the crowd's kind of negative. Like if we're not getting a good response sometimes it makes the song more meaningful and egg you on.
TAM: Do you have a favorite song on Wrecking Ball? Either to perform or because the words and music means something special to you personally?
BS: I think “Flesh Colored Canvas” is my favorite. As far as anything I've written I feel like that's the best I've brought to the table yet and kinda
my pride and joy out of all the songs.
TAM: And is that because of the lyrical content or the music or both...?
BS: It's mostly lyrical content, but the music too. You know, a big epic, long song it's got a gentle touch to it which is a little bit different from
the other stuff, it's fun to try to pull off live. I think sometimes playing softer stuff can be more challenging.
TAM: Personally, I love it when verses are sung with meaning and emotion, and that makes up for the actual words. A combination of sounds and words
where the meaning is implied in the delivery more than the translation. Do you feel an atmospheric quality of music overcompensates for otherwise trite
lyrics, making them somehow mean more?
BS: Well, those lyrics to me were intentionally trite, tongue-in-cheek. A lyric like “Stupid human shit for brains”, obviously I can write better lyrics
than that, but it was meant to be very blunt and very simple. A lot of songs I've written lately have been more tongue-in-cheek. We have a song called
“Guns”, it's kind of a b-side, and it's completely meant to aid the whole aesthetic of Nirvana just in the sense that we keep getting so many
references to it. Just 'cus Hardy looks like him.
We wrote a song that was a Nirvana song, kinda. It apes “Aneurysm”. Yeah that's the mentality when I write too, I have a very dry, sarcastic sense of
humor. “The Rat” itself, I was very emotional when I wrote it, really livid, but it's also in your most pissed-off moments you're gunna say something
more to the point and simple, like “stupid human shit for brains”. It's real natural; I wasn't trying to act slick or be really sophisticated. It was
more of a driving straight forward...elaborate insults aren't the ones that really stick to somebody, the ones that are really painful are the ones
that are straight forward.
I think a lot of reviewers can look too deep into stuff when they listen to too much bullshit like Vampire Weekend where they think that everything
needs to be about this super educated highly literate concept and sometimes it's the simplest shit that's the real art. Same reason “Flesh Colored
Canvas” has taken influence from Jackson Pollack and his painting. Maybe his stuff isn't highly academic or intelligent, but it was really blunt and
really just what it was.
TAM: Yeah, slapping paint down on the canvas...
BS: That's why his paintings sell for 20 million while somebody who can draw a pretty painting can't sell their paintings for shit.
TAM: That's right, a lot a people accuse Nirvana of just being verse-chorus-verse and simple chord progressions and power chords, but it obviously
impacted my generation at least. It was important to me.
What about the video for “The Rat”? Watching the video changed my perception of what the song was about even before I knew what it was about; I still
see that boy burying his bag. Driving around thinking, “what's in that bag?”. Who worked on the video and what role did you play in the storyline?
BS: Pamela Littky is a photographer out of L.A., she's a friend of ours, she had this concept and we kinda went with it. There's certain effects to it,
certainly a lot of Athens, the whole thing was shot in Athens. As far as my role, I just reviewed it and made sure it was true to the meaning of it.
I'm not sure if it hit it dead on; that was our first experience with the whole video thing. In the future we'll strive to put more effort into it; it
was kind of thrown together, I think. I don't think it strayed; there were a couple things I had to edit out that I felt were taking away from the
meaning.
TAM: One of the things I'm more interested in doing with Target Audience Magazine is in having friends/artists from the community take a song
and either paint a picture or run with an idea for a video. It may go off in different tangents, but that's the kind of thing I like hearing about: how
artists inspire one another.
BS: Yeah, Hardy's mom actually just did a painting based on that song “Flesh Colored Canvas” it was kind of neat. She took hand-written lyrics and bass
strings and stuff and incorporated that; she's a really good artist.
