September 2008 (PDF) - Antigravity Magazine

FEATURE REVIEWMUSIC
ANTIGRAVITY: You guys aren’t all from here.
How did you end up in New Orleans playing music
influenced by Zydeco?
Christian Küffner: I guess it’s different stories for
everyone. Our bass player is from Slidell. He’s the
newest member of the band. I remember the first time
I saw live Cajun music was a band called Mamou,
on Bourbon Street. It was a long time ago. And they
were really good, a bit of metal, of rock, punk. They
never got beyond being a Bourbon street band, but
they were really good and it was the first time I heard
Cajun or Zydeco. That’s where that started.
AG: How have the physical, historical, social
worlds of New Orleans affected your music?
CK: I think that would happen no matter where you
live. But…
AG: Yeah, I mean just the atmosphere of the city
in general. Could Zydepunks be based anywhere?
Could you guys be based out of New York or
Chicago?
CK: Yeah, but not in the same way. It would sound
different.
AG: How so?
CK: That’s a tough question; I’d have to think about
it. [Pause] It’s hard to nail that. I know we have a
Louisianan sound to us. Regardless that we’re playing
Cajun and Zydeco, there’s something in the way we
sound that’s Louisiana. Maybe that there is no guitar?
Yeah, maybe because people in New Orleans use a lot
differently, be differently. You know, the Dubliners
were around back where everyone in Dublin was
working in factories and not for Microsoft. Same thing
with the Balfa Brothers. They were farmers. But a lot
of the Cajun bands now, they’re not farmers anymore.
Some of them are, but not many.
AG: So you think losing part of that culture affected
the growth of the music?
CK: Yeah, totally. A friend of mine moved to
Portland, Oregon, and I didn’t realize it but Kevin
Burke, who’s one of the most famous Irish fiddlers in
the world, lives there and my friends that live there,
the ones from Thibodaux, we talked about the fact
that culture is pretty much dead compared to what
it used to be. You can play Cajun music—we played
a zydeco festival in Holland this summer and of all
the bands we were the only Louisianan band. Which
is ironic because we are the most untraditional band
there, but they had bands from Germany, Denmark
and England playing Louisiana music. Most Cajun
and zydeco music is still from here but the whole idea
that anybody can just pick a culture and run with it
didn’t used to be. Now, people can do anything they
want. Germany has a huge Irish punk scene.
AG: Really?
CK: Oh yeah. And Columbia, Argentina, Japan,
they’ve got Irish punk bands. It’s totally defused. Like
Flogging Molly—the last time they came through
here they played with a Japanese Irish punk band. So,
as a business strategy it makes sense—make sure
your band is liquored up and well fed because they’ll
play better. It is what it is. But, in a lot of venues
you play—we played in a lot of small towns—were
different because they don’t have music all the time,
so they make a real effort to make an event out of it.
In the cities it’s a less enthusiastic.
AG: When you write lyrics in different languages,
do you write in English first?
CK: No, not at all. It’s weird because English is by
far my strongest language but it’s easier to write in
Spanish, actually, I don’t know why. It’s not my
strongest language, but I think there’s less pressure if
a lot of people can’t understand you. My Spanish just
flows easier. Words are very phonetic and rhyme very
differently in different languages, and in Spanish or
French it’s a lot easier to rhyme because they have
very common endings.
AG: The first two albums were very multi-lingual,
but Finisterre has only four songs that aren’t in
English. Why did you go in that direction?
CK: I don’t know. There’s not much in other languages
on this album, and I was definitely aware of it. I think
I felt more comfortable as a songwriter—period—to
start writing in English. I felt like I just started writing
better lyrics. Also, two of the songs were written by
someone else. And he only speaks English.
AG: You once said that a band has to evolve slowly.
Is Finisterre your evolution?
“We’ve moved away from doing as
much traditional stuff—it feels like
being in a cover band after a while.”
of instruments that aren’t the standard instruments.
AG: A sort of different question—would the
Louisiana influence have come regardless or only if
the band lived here?
CK: You know, it probably would have. I tried to start
a band like this in Philly. But it didn’t work out. So I
said, “Fuck it, I’ll move [to New Orleans].”
AG: Were the Philly people just not that into it?
CK: I wasn’t there very long, and Northeasterners are
a little harder of a nut to crack. And the people in the
south…in the south, if you ask somebody something,
they say, “Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Let’s do
that!” In D.C. or Philly, people would say, “That
sounds great, give me your number.” And they’d
never call. You know, it’s just harder to meet people.
AG: You list a lot of different influences, from the
Balfa Brothers to the Clash to the Ukrainians. Is
there anyone that you find influenced you the most,
or that you like the best?
CK: No. Not really. I mean, amongst certain genres,
yeah. There’s a lot from the Abshires to the Balfa
Brothers. I mean, there’s just a certain era of really
good recordings. Because, you know the really old stuff
that Alan Lomax got down on CD or tape was…it just
didn’t have the same kind of refined sound as a band,
the old kind of Cajun ballad stuff. It’s good, but once
you hit a point where you have Canray Fontenot and
Balfa Brothers, you have some really good recordings,
but once people started taking rock and roll influences
it really changed. So you only have a certain phase.
Same with Irish music. You have the Clancy Brothers
and the Dubliners and you have a certain phase where
you have real music recorded and then after that you
almost can’t recreate it anymore. People used to live
yeah, you don’t have that anymore. Which is why I
think I find those recordings so special.
AG: Do you think it’s good to have things so
defused?
CK: It’s kind of strange. I mean, the world is changing
so fast. I think because my parents are from the old
world that I have a foot in that kind of mentality. I
remember things being much more traditional when I
was growing up. I’d visit Ecuador, where my mom’s
from, and Ecuador now is just a completely different
world. It was still halfway in the 1800s when I used
to visit.
AG: It’s westernized now?
CK: Yeah, and the internet has changed everything.
You know, people used to talk about albums there
and stuff, but they would only get very limited access.
Now with the internet they’re just as fast as Americans
or Europeans to be at the forefront of things. So
something that would happen in Europe could go to
Ecuador sooner, or Tahiti for example. And that never
used to be the case. It used to take, like, ten years for
albums to get down there.
AG: You just came back from touring in Europe.
What are some of the differences between playing
in Europe and in the states?
CK: A lot. The distances are much shorter. That’s
the first thing. Club owners and venues tend to be
friendlier. They also tend to treat the band better.
Everybody feeds you. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the
country or the city.
AG: That’s a nice perk.
CK: It’s great and makes sense because there’s nothing
worse than showing up to a club and you’re hungry
and you’ve got to pay for your own food. You know,
CK: We’ve moved away from doing as much
traditional stuff—it feels like being in a cover band
after a while. I like the old songs and, who knows, we
might do more traditional stuff again because I think
we’re tired of all the old ones we play. I’ve been playing
a lot of them since before the band. I’ve been playing
some of the same songs for twelve years. I don’t know
what we’re going to do now because I’ve been writing
a little bit, but I need like, a month. I need to lock
myself in a closet and start writing. You don’t know
where it goes. I know that I used to write all the time
and I used to love this really heavy electronic stuff,
but when I sat down to write it was ambient in the
sense that I didn’t know what was going to come out.
I never think exactly, “Okay, this is what I’m going to
do.” I just start playing. I guess that’s how I write. I
very, very rarely make a conscious effort to write.
AG: Is that the same way with the music?
CK: It’s the same as the lyrics. It’s just whatever starts
coming out. It depends also on what I’ve been listening
too. For this album I listened to a lot of music from
France. And a lot of people don’t really know much
about music from France, but this album has a lot of
that sound. But it’s just kind of hard to explain. People
know Irish, people know Cajun but people don’t know
a lot of stuff from France.
AG: I was going to ask what you guys liked about
playing traditional music, but you just said you’re
tired of it.
CK: No, I’m not tired of it. It’s just that we’ve been
playing some of the same things for ten years. I heard
this horrible jackass on WWL radio talking about
how he’d seen Rod Stewart and David Bowie. He
said he loved Rod Stewart because he played old stuff
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