MUSIC INTERVIEW: EVEREST

Russell Pollard & Jason Soda Tell Us About Their Musical Dream-Team & The Joy of Vinyl

 

Everest formed in Los Angeles during 2007 in a moment of mutual downtime for its members from their musical day jobs playing in and with Sebadoh, the Folk Implosion, Earlimart, Great Northern, Alaska!, John Vanderslice, and the Watson Twins. Signed to Neil Young’s Vapor Records, the side project quickly became a main gig for them all, and Everest’s warmly received 2008 debut, Ghost Notes, has set the scene for their fantastic new album, On Approach. The day after completing a 60-date coast-to-coast tour to support that album, a somewhat ragged (but still energized) version of Everest’s Russell Pollard and Jason Soda sat down for an interview with Buzzine in Burbank, California…

 

Stefan Goldby: Can we begin with the story of how the band came together: Obviously you were all in different bands around town, but what was the seed of all that somehow becoming Everest?

 

Russell Pollard: Everest was basically Jason and myself getting together for late-night drinks on my front porch…

 

Jason Soda: Didn’t really have anything to do with the music really…

 

RP: Other than the fact that we just really bonded over records and vintage gear. Both of us have a super nerdy affinity for buying as much cool stuff as we can possibly get our hands on, from the ‘60s and ‘70s…

 

JS: And basically, getting yourself in as much debt as you can.

 

RP: Right. And we high-fived on that when we first became friends…

 

JS: …severely in debt.

 

RP: The band formed over a conversation about all the things we loved - about what turned us on about music, and we just decided we were going to do something for ourselves, and Everest sort of started out as an orphan band because everyone in the band were sidemen in other bands (various bands in the LA scene) and we’d known each other and come up with each other in different bands, touring with each other… So Jason and I put together this idea of, “Why don’t we just call all of our orphan buddies who aren’t working right now - that would be the dream team to do a band with and just see how it goes?”  And we had some songs, and it was very freeform. We just pulled together all of our favorite gear and our favorite people, and now we’re sitting here a few years later having accomplished our goals.

 

JS: The first time that the entire band met each other as a group was when we went in to record some songs just for fun or experiment or whatever, because the other guitar player has this really awesome studio, so we were like, “Let’s go record some songs.” So Russ had some songs, so we went in there and we did that, and that was the first time that everybody was like, “Hey, what’s happening? How you doin’?” And then we ended up doing that, and we actually do still sell a 12” which I keep having to remember that that was actually from the first day that the band even knew each other - I think that’s pretty cool.  I’d like to see another band that’s got something like that…

 

RP: It’s pretty neat. “Hey, let’s capture our first meeting and then put it out on a 12”

 

JS: It could be dangerous.  It could have sucked.

 

RP: Again, debt. I don’t think we’ve sold many of those yet.

 

JS: No. But we’ve got ‘em if you want ‘em! 

 

RP: We’ve got a stack of 500 in my garage.

 

JS: Two for one!

 

SG: So that first cycle of everything took you through your debut album Ghost Notes, and now we’re some way around a second lap of the track. For On Approach, going up to Prairie Sun Studios, recording with Rob Schnapf… in wine country - that, obviously, is helpful, just in general.  Is there a moment, in terms of recording On Approach that you think of when you think about that time?

 

JS: One thing I realized was you think you’re ready to do it, and you think you’re prepared to do it, and you’re like, “We’ve got all these songs…” and then you get up there…and in my head, I was like… “Man, we really don’t have our stuff together like I thought we did.” The epiphany was when Rob was mixing the record and the overdubs were happening almost at the same time or just prior, and I was like, “Oh wow, this sounds like a real record. Okay: This is gonna happen.”  Because there was a time when I was like, “I thought we knew what we were doing, and we don’t.”  Kind of.  One day you don’t know what you’re doing, the next day you do…

 

RP: We never know what we’re doing. We just play like we do. And making On Approach was definitely a prime example of that, because we put in a couple weeks of pre-production, and all of us had come in with material and songs, and we got in the studio and, after a few days, personalities, egos, everything starts coming out and you get a little bit of a rough edge around your good time that you’re thinking you’re gonna have. And then you have to figure out what to do with that. And I think all of us sort of scurried off in our own directions, and in the end, we were forced to finish this thing as a unit, and I think it helped us. We learned things about each other, we raised the bar really high, and that almost destroyed the band on the second album…

 

JS: I really do think that happens to every single band that tries to do a record. There’s no way that people are going to go into a room and all be like, “Right?! Yeah!  Oh, okay, awesome! Let’s do it!  Like this? Yeah! Great!” There’s no way…

 

RP: I would love it if that could happen, but…

 

JS: They say that Dark Side of the Moon was done like that, but I don’t know, man, really.  I don’t believe it.

 

RP: You never know.

 

JS: They’re like, “We all knew what we were doing. We all agreed. We were all on the same page.”

 

RP: The pivotal moment for this record was definitely when we put on the test pressing.  We got a vinyl test pressing back, and we put it on and we had some friends over… Rob Schnapf was one of them, who mixed the record, and a couple of the guys from My Morning Jacket, and we sat down and we had a glass of wine and we listened to the record, and flipped it over and listened to the B-side and, for me, that was the moment that we did something cool.  This sounds good to me. This sounds like a painting. It’s complete, it’s weird, it’s unique, this is good.  But it took a while to get there. It took us a few months.

 

SG: Is that why it was assembled as a two-sided vinyl record? Did you guys approach it that way to start with?

 

JS: I don’t think so. Some bands, most of their material kind of sounds the same, and other bands tend to be more dynamic or whatever, but when you have all these different people coming in with all these different ideas, all these songs end up sounding really drastically different from each other. So then you look back and you realize that you have this cornucopia of songs, and then of course you know you’re gonna put it on a record. Then I think you just have to make it work, and you want to make it work smartly. So you definitely do think about that, but I don’t think that when you’re in the early stages you’re like, “All right, how is this going to sound on Side 2, Song 2…?” 

 

RP: I do think, however, that with the way we record, always capturing the sound on tape machines and trying to keep it in that realm, and also knowing that we’re going to put out a vinyl record and that that’s going to be the thing that we push for our listeners for people to buy because we think it sounds the best. And the sequence is really important. Vinyl, as you get in toward the center, the sound just naturally deteriorates and gets more and more noisy. The grooves get smaller and thinner, so you think about the most impactful, as far as sound and energy, and you want to keep those on the outside groove. And when you get into the center, maybe go to the softer, quieter stuff, or maybe the simpler stuff with just an acoustic guitar and a vocal because that’s not gonna saturate those grooves. So you think about all that as you’re doing it, not only just the order you want people to listen to this in and how the story plays out with the lyrics and the emotions, but also how the sound quality is going to be. We don’t think about CDs. We obviously have them and still buy them occasionally, but we think about records. We don’t think about MP3s. We have those too, but I don’t think that’s really what we’re thinking about when we make songs, and how they’re going to be listened to and how they’re going to be captured for people to listen to. It’s not a format that I appreciate - I love audiophile vinyl pressings, and we try to do that with our records…

 

JS: We got lucky on the first record and were able to split it and put it on two discs—10 or 11 songs, something like that—and when you spread them out and put them on two pieces, you don’t have to worry about the songs in the middle degrading, so you can just put whatever you want and then make it flow the way you really want to make it flow, rather than having to sacrifice and be like, “Well it’s going to sound like crap if we put this song…” So that was good. I wish we could have done that on this one, but…next time, I guess.

 

RP: I do too. Warner Brothers? We want two albums for the next one.

 

JS: Or we could be like Radiohead and do the whole thing on 12 inch 45’s… That’s ideal.

 

RP: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

 

SG: When you finished the record and Neil Young listened and said that “Unfortunate Sea” is destined to be ‘a classic’… Is that scary? Is that exciting? How does that play on your mind as an artist?

 

RP: Having someone like Neil tell you that is humbling, first of all, because, like many people, I really look up to him--his integrity, the way he does things, the records he’s put out… And we were lucky enough to get to tour with him and get to know him a little bit, and he put out our first record, and he fostered our band and he saw us grow from the very beginning, pretty much until now, so the fact that he took an interest in us as a band and in songs that we wrote where he knew the lyrics and he was paying attention, that, in and of itself, was the greatest compliment we could have gotten, and then to hear him over the phone at his manager, Elliot Roberts’s office, say that that song was a classic, I felt like crying. In all honesty, that’s what it did to me. That was the gut reaction I had. And whenever I get nervous or I get down on myself, I think about that, and that’s what I got from that. That’s all. It’s just the confidence in knowing that one of your heroes knows you exist and approves of something you did. I could die tomorrow. Not that I want to, but it’s one of those things. That’s the meaning of life--that kind of connection.  Not only do you have that with your band, but then your band gets recognized and you get appreciated…

 

SG: How would you guys describe this record?

 

JS: Getting closer, I think, to doing what you want to do when you have more time to do it, because the first record was so fast, and we did it in such a little amount of time, and it came out and we started touring after that, so we really became a touring band after the first record was really done. So you play live and you write these songs on the road, and then you really learn what kind of band you are. I just think this record is a good example of what you might think the band is going to sound like. Obviously it does sound like that now, but it’s just evolution, I think.  This record is a good example of our band’s evolution as a band evolving.

 

SG: Beyond hearing the record, the other way people get introduced to you guys through a music video, and a video goes out into the world in slightly different ways than it did ten years ago. Talk to me a little bit about “Let Go.” Did that come from an idea that you guys had or from the directors? I’d love to know what the original treatment of that video was, because it’s pretty powerful and there’s a lot of things going on. What was the starting point for that, creatively?

 

RP: I met the General Assembly guys—the directors—a couple months before they wrote the treatment, and then I told the guys in the band about them and sent them some links to some other videos they had done. I think they’d done one for Grandaddy…I just liked their aesthetic and I liked the fact that they weren’t trying to do things that were obvious and spoon-fed. And we just got it. We got each other. We understood each other, and they understood that song lyrically, and they really went for it. They wanted to work on that song, so they came to us with a treatment, and they had everything in it with the older guy and this younger girl and this vague sense of loss or saying goodbye but you can’t really tell what’s going on. It’s left to interpretation, and I love that. All their videos are like that, and that’s why we wanted to use those guys. And when it first came back, it was too dark, so they edited it down and the ending was a little more hopeful, which is great because the song intends to be that way. It intends to be more hopeful than dark. But they just read into it. They made a great video, and I like how serious it is, and I like the split frame idea, which I think they got from “Mad Dogs & Englishmen”—the Joe Cocker live footage that’s split-screen. I think they got it from that and then just worked in their own ideas. But I remember when they first talked to me about it and I thought that was a great idea. I loved that, and I loved watching that. It’s so entertaining. You can watch the video three or four times in a row and just focus on one screen at a time, absorb it all. So I give kudos to the General Assembly for getting that video done, and they’re just very good dudes. All the videos they’ve done are amazing, so we got fortunate.

 

SG: So the final way of getting introduced to you guys is seeing you live, which we did last night, and it was great. But the thing that occurred to us, standing watching it, is if you put five singer-songwriters in a band together, how does it end up not being a ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ situation? You guys are switching instruments and there’s all kinds of things going on, and everybody can sing, and it’s not just like, “You’re the bass player and you stand over there and lay down the bass line…” It’s a very collaborative thing. How do you pull that energy together to become ‘Everest’, as opposed to five disparate guys?

 

JS: Everybody in the band may be songwriters to one degree or another, but nobody is really pining to get to the front. Russell is the lead singer. He writes 95% of the lyrics or whatever. That’s his job. Everybody understands that’s his job, and everybody else has their own job. It doesn’t mean that you don’t say, “Hey man, I’ve got this thing…Okay?” That happens all the time. Sometimes it can get a little ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’, but that only happens, I think, when one person is like, “It’s got to be like this,” and then you have these other people that are like, “Well, what if it’s like this?” “No!” That’s when you get too many cooks. Or if one person is just super-passionate and they’re ready to punch you, it’s like… “All right. Let’s do it that way.” It maybe sounds more hairy, I think, than it is, because everybody understands. Everybody is really open to each other’s…

 

RP: There’s an etiquette in Everest, and there’s a line that can’t really be crossed and if you cross it, you are definitely reminded that you did. And then there’s a conversation that happens in an intervening kind of way. “Hey man, you crossed the line. Step back over that line and let’s work together here. We’ve got to compromise.” We’ve got five people involved that are really passionate and interested and engaged and care, so it’s a double-edged sword, in a way, but I think it’s better than having one passionate guy that’s trying to rally all the troops and everybody is just playing along. So I’d rather have it be us, where everybody is super involved and engaged, rather than, “You write all the stuff and we’re just gonna coattail ride.” There’s none of that happening, and I think that’s making the best out of having five individuals that are very creative and multi-taskers…

 

JS: That’s when you come up with material that surprises yourself. There was one song that we did on the first record that was a total combination of Joel (Graves)’s material and my material and Russ’s material, and when the song was done, it was really special because you would never have guessed that it was going to turn out that way. If you’re by yourself writing the whole thing, you’d have an idea and you’d be like, “It makes sense. It’s what I meant to do.” But when you combine all these things, that’s when you get things that surprise you, and by being surprised, that means you’re doing something that’s important, because you’ve had your whole life to listen to music and you know what surprising music sounds like and how to be excited, but how do you excite yourself with your own material? That’s hard. And sometimes you need everybody coming in and creating that thing, and then you’re like, “Wow, yeah. That’s good.” It’s almost like you weren’t even a part of it, it’s so foreign. But it’s good. We don’t do that song live anymore, though. But I’m sure we will…

 

SG: Obviously, you have a lot of room to play between the five of you, and it was a blast to watch, and we definitely got the impression that you guys were happy to be back and that this was a loose, easy show to play. If everything came together in a perfect storm, what would make the perfect Everest show?

 

RP: I feel like as long as we can hear each other and the sound on stage is good, we can achieve that on any given night. That isn’t to sound arrogant hopefully, it’s just that we’re in a really good place. We just did like 60 shows in the last two and a half months, and I can’t think of any of them that were bad. Maybe they weren’t perfect, but that’s not what we’re about, so I think the perfect show for us is just to have the conditions be adequate or above average, and then we can just do our thing. And it’s like 45 minutes to an hour of being completely transcendental and rising above all of the crap that we deal with every day, for just 45 minutes or an hour, and that’s perfect.

 

JS: It’s so much easier to have a good show when you’re in a bigger venue. When you’re in a small club… I remember last night I looked over and saw this guy who looked like Otto. It was total Otto. This guy looked just like this guy. And I saw the dude in the audience, and I looked and I was like, “Is that Otto?” And I was like, “No, it’s not.” And he intimidated me for some reason, and I was like, “Why am I looking at this guy? Why is he looking at me?” And then I was playing and I’m all like, “What am I doing? Does it sound all right? Oh, that sucked.”

 

RP: I never know any of this is going through your head. I’m just like, “Yeah J, get it!” And you’re over there like… I’m sorry.

 

JS: It’s all right. But ideal situations—I don’t know.

 

RP: You block all that out.

 

JS: It’s hard to be intimate with people that are standing there looking at you really weird, as opposed to the girl that was like, “Aaah.”

 

RP: They don’t scare me. The guy in the hat with the beard was it?

 

JS: He had these daggers for eyes and I was like, “Get off me.” 

 

RP: So, a perfect show would be no guys that look like Otto. That look like the guy looking at you.

 

JS: And if Otto sees this…love you.

 

RP: Love you, Otto.

 

JS: But ideal situations: no weird guys with piercing eyes and hats and beards—like crazy big beards and big hats, not like normal beards and normal hats. And a monitor guy…

 

RP: A monitor guy would really make things good.

 

JS: To be able to hear yourself. All these other bands are like, “What are you talking about—monitor guy?” Lights… I don’t know. It’d be nice to have lighting. If somebody could do the lights… It’s so hard to DIY it when you’re on a shoestring budget or no budget and you have like flood-lamps and you’re like, “What are we going to do for our show?” “I don’t know. Let’s put these lights and do this thing…”

You’re playing the show and you turn around and you look back, and, “Well shit. It’s as good as we can do.”  But it would be nice to have somebody who was twisting knobs and moving faders, and making the show like a big show or something. These are some of the things down the line.

 

RP: Down the line? We could do it tomorrow if we want.

 

JS: But then again, we could play a garage, play a house party…

 

RP: Yeah, play a basement…

 

JS: Basement party…

 

RP: For Pabst Blue Ribbon as payment… Remember that?

 

JS: I do.

 

RP: Yeah…

 

SG: So, where to from here? You’ve just come off 60 dates. I’m sure, with as much going on with you guys, you’re already somewhere in the process of another record, at least mentally, if not physically yet. What do you want your last word to be today in terms of what’s still to come from Everest?

 

RP: From here, what’s coming for us, is a little bit of rest, and then just sort of a brainstorming about where we’re headed. We really don’t know. We’re not rudderless, but we are free right now to do cool stuff and create, and that’s probably what we’ll end up doing. And we’ll be out on the road in spring, so soon enough we’ll be touring again.

 

JS: And I know that every record that we make is going to be better than the last. I really do think that because, as time goes on, the band becomes more solidified, and it’s gonna be good. The next record is gonna be good. I’m excited and I have no idea...

 

RP: …so please buy it, and please come and see us play!

 

 

Everest’s ‘On Approach’ is out now on Vapor/Warner Bros. Records.