An interview with Bob Fay. You know him from Sebadoh but he has done plenty of other things (Cardinal!, etc.). Read on and be enlightened….

What year were you born and where did you grow up? What do you remember most about growing up where you did?
\In 1962 I was born in So.Weymouth MA. Which is 12-15 miles south of Boston. When I was 3 my family moved to the North Shore of Boston, specifically to Peabody, then and probably still (albeit with 25,000 more folks living there now) a typical Boston suburb. I guess what I remember most about growing up there was the relative peace of my surroundings. My ‘hood was mostly young boys for some striking reason so there was always sports to play, bikes and/or sleds to ride, snowforts to build record collections to create, etc. My folks were in their 40’s when my little brother and I were born and that, coupled with the more laidback parenting style of the 70’s, meant freedom to do what we wanted w/o any parental nay saying. For the most part…

What was your introduction to music? Did your parents (or maybe older siblings) have records around the house?
As far as musical lineage goes my grandfather on my mother’s side was a Julliard-trained musician who played a lot of different styles of music in the 20’s and 30’s. he had already passed away by the time I was born but he certainly left an impression on my mom. She was always playing music for me from the start. Everything from the crooners of the 40’s and 50’s to whatever current pop music struck her fancy. My oldest brother Tommy played drums in a number of jazz bands throughout the 60’s, mostly dive bars and social functions in the Boston area. When he was a young man most of the be-bop and avant-garde guys would make the trip to Boston for week-long engagements and he tried to see as many as he could. He, probably more than anyone else, got me going on this musical path and remains a great storyteller of that era when we get together.

What was the first record you remember ever buying?
1st record purchased was the Rikki Don’t Lose That Number b/w Any Major Dude Will Tell You 45 by Steely Dan,1975. It would most certainly have been Rock n Roll Hootchie Coo by Rick Derringer 2 years earlier but there was a 5-year span (1970-1975) in my house where we had no functioning turntable and no amount of begging changed the silence. It’s almost as if the folks knew that rock and roll was at a low point and spared me the crappy records I would have brought home. What fine people…

What was your first gig? Mission of Burma? Salem 66? SS Decontrol? Moving Targets? Someone else?
My 1st show was in 1973 featuring Chicago and the Beach Boys @ the big stadium in Foxboro, MA., aged 11. That was followed by all manner of gigantic rock gigs (Robin Trower, Jethro Tull, BOC, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Foghat, etc) until a fateful issue of CREEM magazine (early 77, I’d guess) contained a small article about the Sex Pistols and their foul-mouthed British TV Grundy appearance. The 14 year old me was intrigued. I still mostly tagged along to the big barns with my friends for the rock. Until shortly after spinning the dial I stumbled across the Salem State College radio station WMWM and heard a DJ named Depraved Dave play the Damned’s “New Rose” 45 and I was completely rewired from then on. Although I was going to Boston all the time for record shopping I usually would skedaddle back to my vanilla suburb so I didn’t see any punk bands live until 1978/9 or so. Unless you count sneaking into the Rat to see the Cars before their 1st record came out. But that shit is new wave….

Did you feel part of the Boston scene back in the 80's? It seemed like the perfect place back then, so many great bands.
Well, I suppose if I had to dissect the 80’s it would go like this…the first 4 years were mostly spent as a young guy working for the Dept. of Revenue in Govt. Center. It was quite the cherry gig for awhile due to a really light work load at most points and the kind of bosses that easily looked the other way, a lot. So, due to the influx of cash from work and the relative flexibility of my hours I saw just about every band in the early to mid 80’s that cruised through town. Mission of Burma, Lyres, Neats, Native Tongues, Christmas, Volcano Suns, Busted Statues, Kilslug, etc. and all the out-of-town acts that are far too numerous to mention. It was insanely memorable…from 1984 onwards I was playing in bands and doing the random gig here and there w/ Mommy (featuring Glenn Jones, Phil Milstein, Johnny Blood and Dana Hatch, for 20 years the drummer with Cheater Slicks) and Crush (w/ Gary Waliek, Bob Weston and Ron Ward). Neither of these groups ever left Boston but Crush released a single a year starting in 88 through the patronage of John Henderson. I also (in 85) started doing weekend roadie gigs w/ Christmas that turned into a lifestyle for a while. What started out as trips to NYC/Philly/NJ with Christmas, Sorry, Volcano Suns, Big Dipper et al become the only logical way to travel the country and ignore my working class life in Boston. This was right after I quit the state govt. job in a fit of bohemian optimism to drive a cab in Cambridge and read lots of Celine and Billie Bob Briggs. I also bought a drum kit from Liz Cox of Christmas and started to figure this timekeeping racket out. The world was my office back then.

I suppose Boston did have an unfair amount of great bands in the 80’s but it happened to coincide with the utter worst in recording practices for a lion’s share of them. History hasn’t been kind to the gated drum sound…

Ever see Kilslug? If so what was that like?
I did see Kilslug (and the Groinoids too) a few times but the show that sticks in my craw was at the Cambridge YWCA where the band really managed to bum out an entire room of bowling bowl heads waiting for some hardcore band whose name escapes me. Larry Lifeless and crew seemed incredibly drunk for a matinee gig but this was cleared up by the band when they announced that they had been up for a couple of days “snorting lines, drinking JD and eating steaks.” They slowly shredded my mind apart…

Was Belt Buckle your first band? I think that was the first thing I'd ever hear you were in? How did you meet Eric Matthews?
Beltbuckle might have been my 8th band or something like that. My very first band that played with any consistency was with Conrad Capistran (Sunburned Hand of the Man, TARP,etc.) and Todd Nudleman (The In Out). We never did have a name because we never left the dumpy basement we played in. That space was shared with Christmas and Uzi and would have been in the 84-86 era. Right underneath Fast Eddies pizza, Brighton,MA. Anyway…Beltbuckle was an obvious extension of my friendships with Lou and Eric. I met Eric while living in a very cozy apt. Building in Somerville with a gal named Lauren. She was from New Orleans and was getting quite fed up with the Boston scene and wanted to head back south. We had two English bulldogs in this very tiny place and when we would bring them out for their “business” we would run into Eric and his then gal pal (now wive) Marie, who were letting their dog Franny out for the same. . Lauren finally fled town and I nearly followed her to the depths of Mississippi to the farm life, complete with a catfish pond. That didn’t happen but I DID start hanging out with Eric nearly every day. At this point in time he had left school and was working at a copy shop in downtown Boston. Marie was finishing her degree at Tufts and working at that most Boston of stores, Filene’s basement. My heart was very bruised from Lauren leaving town and Eric and Marie made sure I didn’t just sit in my apartment and wither on the vine. In fact, all those photos of moi from the 91-93 era were a testament to E & M’s excellent cooking skills. Eric was very smitten with Barlow’s early Sebadoh/ Sentridoh work and after a short while of how-do-you-do’s we set off for Anne Slinn’s basement to get the Beltbuckle songs into shape. Our shared MO was to goof around with music construction until we were happy and then start my favorite part of the equation, which was throwing lines of words at each other. Mike Hibarger at the Sonic Bubblegum label had been pestering Lou for a release so we gave him four songs for the Beltbuckle 45 EP. He then repressed it 3 or 4 times. So it goes…

Tell me about your tenure in Cardinal? That one cd is one of my all time faves.
“Cardinal? I started that band!” I just love saying that…since the Cardinal beginnings have been in liner notes, band bio sheets, etc. I won’t go into too much detail but I was living in Somerville in the same building as Eric Matthews circa early 92, playing in many bands. Douglas Wolk, former Harvard kid who had just moved to NYC, asked me if I wanted to play in a Fall cover band for one night @ the Middle East club. It seemed a little sacrilegious to me but Douglas promised me a bunch of sealed ESP LP’s if I would do it. Well, he obviously knew my weak spot so I said yes. Richard Davies saw me play and struck up a conversation after the gig. When I found out he had been in the Moles I was gob smacked. I first heard the Moles while on acid (circa 91) and his music really left an impression on my fragile, eggshell mind. He had just moved to Boston from London and was looking for like-minded freaks to play with. And he had been stockpiling songs since the dissolution of the Moles. My first thought was to get him to Mark Perretta’s place to see what happens but they both just got drunk and listened to Jandek LP’s, so the story goes. A nice enough time but not a lot of musical compatibility going down. I can’t remember if I then invited Richard over to my apt. Building or if we went right to the basement @ Anne Slinn’s house to play with Eric. It’s a little hazy. But when we got together and worked on a couple of Richard’s new tunes all three of us knew that the potential for something swell was there. We squirreled away in the basement once or twice a week until we thought we could play a show. It wasn’t intended on being the weakest attendance in nightclub history but Cardinal’s one and only gig was for our girlfriends and the soundman upstairs @ the Middle East., sometime in the summer of 92. I wish I had a tape of it, actually.

How long has Deluxx been going? Was that next?
Deluxx started in the fall of 1991 after Mark Perretta and I met through a mutual pal. This was maybe 5 months before Richard and Eric and I started Cardinal. We were instantly close and right off the bat I knew that Mark was one of the funniest people I’d ever met. Besides, he’s one of the quickest musical minds I’ve ever had the pleasure, etc. I had been seeing him around town playing bass with his band Subskin Cables and before I even knew him he was working at a copy shop in Harvard SQ. (with my future wive. Small world…) where he would be out front smoking cigarettes, hugging his then-girlfriend Caroline, etc. He looked cool but his somewhat calm demeanor made his comedy even more spellbinding. And we started a Monday night jam @ his house known as the ‘Jazz organ workshop” where we indulged in beer, calzones, lovegrass, and instruments fed through echo chambers and reverb units. Oh, and lots of organ records. It was kind of our own self-started backlash against grunge, which was getting a lot of press at the time. Certainly glorious for a while until we invited someone over whom insisted on a cup of hot tea, which she quickly spilled on me, by accident. After this local tragedy we decided to play a little louder in spaces that we would finagle time in on the MIT campus. We started gigging by opening up for Juliana Hatfield and stunned the room with our improvising and stage chatter. And the phalanx of strobe lights we brought must have bummed out more than a few Juliana fans. Through the Sebadoh booking agent@ Flower we managed a fair amount of gigs and started putting out 45’s and the eventual LP/CD. Some of my greatest moments being alive have involved Mark Perretta playing guitar while I played drums. We are still in touch but are lucky to play every few years or so and that saddens me greatly.

How did the Sebadoh thing come about? Had you know Lou or Eric previously?
I wrote Lou a “good going” letter around the time the first Sebadoh cassette came out, maybe 4-5 months after his well-documented departure from Dinosaur Jr. He wrote back rather quickly and we eventually met in Boston @ the 1st Sebadoh gig in Boston at a gothic club called Ground Zero. Shortly thereafter, Lou and Kathleen (who had just graduated from Smith College) decided to move to Boston for a broader job market selection and I landed them the apartment my then-girlfriend Lauren was vacating. Lou and I started hanging out quite a bit; record shopping, eating seafood, writing record reviews while stoned, etc. Eric was already starting to drift in and out of the band by then and I filled in on their first three-week tour, spring 91. My first show (on only a few numbers) was at the Cat’s Cradle, Chapel Hill, NC opening for Fugazi. It kind of went from there off and on for the next 6 years…I did not personally know either Lou or Eric before they started Sebadoh.

What was the high point of Sebadoh? Low point? Were you living in Los Angeles for a time? What happened at the end?
Jeez, high point? I guess my favorite memories of those days were the actual recording of certain tunes. Just about all things recorded in Anne Slinn/Bob Weston’s basement in those days, including Deluxx and Cardinal, has an extra fond meaning to me. A kind chunk of the Sebadoh ‘Bakesale’ sessions were so seamless and casually successful that you kind of didn’t want them to end. Really early live gigs wherein any thing could happen to induce endless space jams that might eventually morph into a song. Or not…Keep in mind I was having the same sort of musical epiphanies with Deluxx, Cardinal, Crush, Unconvinced, etc and thought that keeping an open mind to different types of approaches to improv and composition could keep all this stuff fresh to play and build on.
Low Point was most of the Harmacy material where we let a number of other people dictate some sort of radio-friendly doohickey sound. It was a complete drag to hear engineers blasting Oasis on the huge studio speakers as some sort of ideal sonically to reach for. Ah well…

What happened after Sebadoh? You seem to have disappeared, at least from the music scene?
Months after my time with Sebadoh ended I moved to LA and started spending all my money like I was fixin’ to die. Thankfully, I ran into Lei Swanson and she set me straight. We’re still together 12 years later… I almost instantaneously started a band with David Kleiler and Curtis Bonney called Straight to Video that slogged the many, many miles to rock, record, etc in LA with old pals (Bob Weston) and new (David Newton). Also had a weekly get together with Chuck P. and Elea in the high desert that turned into a 4-year collective called the Indignitaries. Lots of side project, one-off, goof ball crap that is so near and dear to my slowly beating heart.. I eventually moved back to the wondrous state of Massachusetts with Lei Fay whilst she carried our 1st baby and two cats to first Northampton and onward to our current woodland home in Easthampton. The long and quite freezing New England nights and a desire to play more guitar led me to finally write out/really play my own songs rather than rely on my many able guitar-playing pals to fill in the blanks for me. No more loud rehearsal spaces meant a welcome lack of clamor. I now spread my available time to 4 or 5 bands when it’s not work or child rearing time.

Please tell me about your family? Now that I have a young daughter (9 months) I am interested in families/kids.
We have two young ones as of 6/09 ages 6(penny) and 3 (Dexter) that are so much fun that when I actually take a minute to enjoy the feeling of fatherhood that maybe makes it all worthwhile it is quickly followed by a need to nap. Penny is that great dichotomy of avant-garde genius in her painting and non-stop fawning over anything princess-related to name two of her many interests. Dexter is my Lil string bean of activity; a real joy to behold. He’s already playing in a couple of bands with me and composing his own songs…

How about telling me the most interesting thing about some of these folks:
Lou Barlow: he was very quick with a tune or a lyric and almost all of my collabs with him were banter and funny wordplay that he could quickly turn into a finished piece. It becomes a strangely addictive way to work in contrast to having a ‘finished’ song to show a band.learn,etc.
Byron Coley: Byron Coley has been one of those guys that made me interested in a lot more music than I had previously known existed. He turned me on to ESP records through his Father Yod radio show on WHRB from the mid to late 80’s. which in turn opened the door to a 20+ year love of free jazz, loner folk and old blues, etc…when I would see him rather consistently (1985-1988) his ability to spin tales of his own youth and early punk indebted years were always fun to hear. Keep in mind I was obsessed with his FE writing for both its’ info and humor so even hanging around in an outer loop via friends every once in a while was quite nice. Incredibly funny, even when he’s cutting you to ribbons.
Michael Cudahy: MC has turned me on to so many artistic endeavors in the 6-7 years that we were tight that I couldn’t come up with just one anecdote. He also is a fantastic guitar player/songwriter who never got the break that he deserved. I really can’t say that about too many people

Peter Prescott: PP is a complete one-off. His drumming in MOB was one of the most intense experiences back in the early 80’s and like a lot of other Boston locals at the time their breaking up was quite devastating to me. Around the time that the Volcano Suns started I was becoming chums with what could be called the Allston/Propeller scene (Christmas, Dangerous Girls,etc.). This was a real swell time to be nightclubbing with a number of fun places to get aurally assaulted and drunkenly get to know some musicians I really liked. Anyway, I spent a lost weekend with the Volcano Suns in 87 (the David Kleiler/Bob Weston line-up) when they played a show a piece in Toronto and Buffalo. Peter had a ridiculous amount of magic mushrooms w/ him and insisted on driving the van after his first dose @ the practice space in Boston. We held on tight as Prescott navigated the Mass Pike while who-knows-what was going on in his mind. He handled the road with ease until we got a few miles from the Canadian border (Peter was riding shotgun by this time) and he had to discard all of his hallucinogens. Not exactly a grown man crying situation but I don’t know if it dawned on Peter that there might be any stash left by the time we hit Canada.
David Kleiler: another stellar guitar player who will probably pop into my life again in a big way when I’m in my early 60’s…. we had a band in LA for years that shoulda/coulda, a real keen observer of pop culture that seared with Boston cynicism. Etc….
Liz Cox: One of my favorite singers. Liz and I both came from similar working class backgrounds and getting to hit the road in 1986 for extended tours together was a great life at that point.
J. Mascis: have spent very little time with J. considering the rock tapestry connection we share. He’s one of those natural musicians that can be powerful at any thing he chooses to play…and play loudly.
Larry Lifeless: can’t say I know Larry in any way at all but his stance against the whole world is rather entertaining.

Top 10 desert island discs?
For today, anyway…
Soft Machine 1st LP
Thelonious Monk “Brilliant Corners” LP
Minutemen “What Makes a Man Start Fires?” LP
Fairport Convention “Liege and Leif” LP
Homosexuals s/t LP
Scott Walker “3” LP
V/A Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music 3xLP
The Frogs “It’s Only Right and Natural” LP
Sun Ra, any, really…
VON LMO “Future Language” LP

All time favorite record label? Why?
Wow, that’s a good question. I once wrote an article for an LA monthly rag that concerned itself heavily with cover art for SST labels releases 001-075 that was merely an excuse to talk up the Great artwork of George Hurley on the Minutemen 12” EP the Punch Line, still a fave piece of culture around our house to inspire the kinder with…I always seem to have current favorite labels (Mississippi, Hyped to Death, Spirit of Orr, etc) but to slim it on down to just one?
All right. Yazoo, then…

You said you had a great story (or 10) about one of my fave defunct Boston bands, Sorry. Please do tell.
Through that whole Christmas/Busted Statues/MOB/Volcano Suns period I got close to the Brookline kids in SORRY around 1984 or so and in January of 85 they had the pleasure of opening for the Minutemen @ the Channel. This gig went off w/o a hitch but the band also had another show booked in NJ with the ‘men the following night. I glommed my way into the van for the trip only to go through disaster after calamity. The heavy snow started to fall before we left MA and it was thick by the first toll stop in CT. The van, purchased by band manager Patrick Amory recently, had seen much better days and barely left CT. intact and operative. The wipers stopped working for good as we barreled towards the Tappan Zee Bridge with Jon Easley hanging out the window, looking fruitlessly for signs in the blinding weather.

Doing anything musically these days? Where do you live? What do you do for a living?
Man, with relatively little time to play I’m going through the most prolific time in my life.

When I can squeeze in the time I’ve been recording with Gary Waliek from Big Dipper and we have 10 songs nearly completed at this point and we might go by the name AMC Gremlin. Gary lives about an hour due east of where I am so we might get together maybe three times a year. He’s one of those guys that I find incredibly easy to work with and I’ll marvel at his skills both musically and handling that entire hardwire tech stuff to get good sounds. It’s been a real life affirming experience to continue to work with him.

I also have a weekly get together a mile from my house that goes by the name of Whyte Kastles. It’s a mostly acoustic 4-piece group with occasional bursts of electronic blather. We work on songs that require attention to structure and harmony. And then we improvise endlessly for a month. I get great joy from this band too…
My taste of improv freedom currently involves Conrad Capistran and myself under the Baby Jesus Burnout banner. Two guys involved in deep listening, call and response and dirge bliss…
And a weekly get together with Jow Jow really clears out the cobwebs too…
The western MA scene is quite nice to behold.

Anything you'd like to add that I didn't ask? Closing Comments? Words of Wisdom?
When you catch a minute do what you’d really like to do.
Oh, and houses made of shrimp attract seagulls and cats…