Permanent Moonlight: An Interview With Britt Daniel Of Spoon

By: Jamie Budzick

Monday July 11, 2005

Their unique blend of indie and punk soon garnished a number of Sonic Youth and Pixies comparisons.
Spoon was in the middle of sound check when the middle-aged man in a Boston Celtics jacket approached. I was sitting on a barstool in the back of the Abbey Pub, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the band to finish tuning up.

"You can't be here," the man said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I have an interview with Britt," I said.

"Interview with who?" he asked.

"Britt Daniel."

"Britt Daniel? I don't know who that is. You can't be here. Doors open at eight."

"He's the lead singer of Spoon."

The man said nothing, only stared.

"Spoon...the band that's playing here tonight. Those guys," I said pointing. "The ones on stage right now."

My words struck him with indifference. I wondered whether I should tell Celtic Jacket guy more. If I should fill him in on what a great band this is, and how HE's making me miss sound check. I wanted to tell him that Spoon was just on Austin City Limits. Or about how I was turned onto their newest album Kill the Moonlight three weeks ago and had since forced all my friends to listen. But he wasn't going to be my friend, so I said nothing. My words would have been wasted.

"Well, as soon as you're done with your interview, you gotta get outta here," he repeated. "Doors don't open till eight."

"No problem. I'll leave after the interview. Doors at eight," I repeated in agreement.

Normally I would have been accompanied by a photographer, which helps when one is trying to pass oneself off as a professional journalist. But Daniel had respectfully declined our request for photos during the interview, and I was left to fend off Celtic Jacket single-handedly.

Sound check was over soon enough, and I joined Daniel as he ate his complimentary meal at the Abbey Pub's adjoining restaurant. It was March 30th, and the band was in Chicago for the third night of a seventeen-show, seventeen-day tour. It wasn't long before I confessed my sentiments regarding the greatness of Kill the Moonlight, and the soft-spoken, 31-year-old Texan, with a head full of tusseled blonde hair, seemed genuinely appreciative. At times however, Daniel seemed uneasy with the interview process and avoided sustained eye contact. Then again, I've never eaten a steak while some jackass with a tape recorder sat across from me, staring, documenting my every word.

Jamie Budzick: Was there a point when you realized that Spoon was going to make it?

Britt Daniel: I'm not really confident that I can do it for a living...for any extended period of time. I mean, I hope so. But so far...it hasn't been the case. I guess it's possible. It's looking more possible now that it was a couple years ago.

What's the difference between now and two years ago?

I don't know...just people know about the band. More people seem to like the band. I think before Girls Can Tell [Spoon's 2001 record] came out, the last time we played in Chicago, we played at Lounge Acts and there were maybe thirty people there. So, the release of that record really made things better...easier for us, and bigger, and this new one, even more so. And it's more fun, ya know? I mean, making the records has always been the same amount of fun. And it's always been the same amount of satisfaction. But touring, it's a big difference.

Do you like making records more than touring?

For me personally, a live show can be a great thing but it only lasts one night. An album is something...there's certain records that I've been listening to for 15 years, or even longer...like Beatles records that just have a special place inside you. It doesn't really matter to me as much if somebody sucks live...if they're great on record that's a great achievement. That's the highest achievement you can make musically-to me.

Your sound is one that seems to be constantly evolving. Each album has a different sound. What was the evolutionary process-personally or musically-that brought you to where you are now?

The one before this [Girls Can Tell] we were trying to make a very traditional pop record....as much as we could, being white guys from Texas. And for Kill the Moonlight, I wanted to make it less something that my mom would like-a little bit more abrasive. And it's not really abrasive. I guess it's slightly more out there. But, I don't know. We started out more as just a straight-up guitar-bass-drums kind of band. And the longer that we've done this, we kind of evaluated what our favorite kinds of records are, and realized that you're really limiting yourself if you're just going to do that. Marvin Gaye sure doesn't just do guitar, bass and drums. Marvin Gaye uses vibraphones and strings and reverb. And these are all things we were very afraid of on our first couple of albums.

So what gave you the confidence to start incorporating these different elements?

I don't know if it was confidence as much as just recognizing that those things were okay. I guess there was some confidence too, like the longer we existed the more I felt comfortable that we were doing something good. But I think a big part of it was just looking at the kind of records that were my favorite, that were classics that I wanted to listen to when I was fifteen and I still want to listen to now. And some of those are just guitar- bass-drums albums. But there's a lot that aren't. And I want to try and do all different things, you know?

Was there a concept or idea you had in mind when doing Kill the Moonlight?

I just really see it as a collection of songs. I'm not good enough to....well, maybe I just know it's not wise for me not to try and make a record like that. We just go through so many ideas. Maybe someday I'll be able to do it. So far it's just been, "Get a song that's good."

The album seems to have a slacker theme.

I really wasn't trying to write about slackers, but I know a lot people take it that way. "Small Stakes" to me is people who just don't deal with big stakes...people that just work at Jack-In-The-Box or people who haven't been able to get themselves in a position where they're doing something that they really like. It's not that they don't care; it's just that they're not in that position. "The Way We Get By" was really supposed to be about...kinda like this...punk rock couple or something. I don't know.

Daniel was never destined for a complacent life of paper hats and nametags. He grew up in Temple, Texas, an hour north of Austin. After high school, he attended the University of Texas in Austin where he majored in Radio, TV and Film-not music-because he "didn't know what else to pick."

So what do you think you'd be doing if you weren't in a band?

I kind of have a feeling that if I wasn't doing something I really liked, I'd just be trying to make money.

You mean like hustling?

What?

You know, a hustler...on the streets?

No, no. Like trading bonds or something.

Did growing up near a musical Mecca have a big influence on you?

Austin's a big music city in that you can go and see forty bands a night on any night. But I wasn't doing that. Austin was cool to me because it had record stores.

What was the first album you really got in to?

Well, I had a bunch of my dad's albums. I remember the first thing I really took to on my own was the Bee Gees. I was really into the Bee Gees around 1978.

The disco boogie era?

Uh huh. It was his record, but I would specifically put it on. He didn't have a lot of punk rock. He didn't have any punk rock. I didn't know what punk rock was until eight years later.

Being that you're from Texas, I feel obliged to ask your feelings about G. Dubya.

We're ashamed the President is from Texas, as I think somebody recently said.

And the war against Iraq?

I'm really against it. I think it's a grave error. I think that it's bad news. It's going to make more things worse for us than better. So, it's really frustrating. What can you do though? What can I do? Other than say it's very frustrating, and I hate it, yet it's happening.

Do you feel compelled as a musician to address everything that's going on?

I thought about writing a song, but I couldn't really figure out what I would want to say, and how I would say it eloquently. But I wouldn't want to just make a song that was about "Give Peace A Chance," because I'm not a peacenik. I don't think that war should never happen. I just think this one is incredibly wrong and not in our best interest.

Now that you're getting more exposure, and your name is mentioned in the media, do you worry about being perceived in a self-righteous, negative light...like Bono?

I'm not worried about it, because I don't really talk about it a whole lot. I'll always just say what I believe. I mean you have to. I keep hearing all these news stories about, "why does it matter what celebrities think?" It's just funny that people ask that now. It's like, why do you cover celebrities when they get married or why do you cover celebrities when they're getting out of limousines? It's the same exact thing. No, their opinions shouldn't mean anything more. But it shouldn't be that exciting that they're getting out of limousines anyway. It's just really hypocritical for people to say, "I wish these celebrities would shut up," ya know?

What's in store for the next album?

I really just started trying to write the next album's worth of songs in the last three months. So far I have no idea what it's going to be like. It's just kind of a bunch of ideas that I've thrown on tape. I don't have any solid, fully written songs yet because it takes me a long time to get everything together. And I've been really busy.

How do you approach song writing? What's your process?

There's tons of different ways, tons of different exercises. Sometimes I think it helps to learn a song that your really admire. And learn how the chords are arranged and learn how to play it on guitar and piano. And maybe that'll take you somewhere else. Sometimes I just sit down and get real pumped on coffee and just throw out ideas. Sometimes it helps to just lie in bed and try to let something come to you. There's all different ways you can approach it. But the most essential thing is recognizing that most of the ideas are not going to be ones you want to work on. They're not gonna be brilliant. And you've just got to accept that those ideas come and you've got to let them go and accept that something else will come. It just gets frustrating sometimes because you're like, "I worked all day and I don't think that anything I did is necessarily going to be something that I want to keep working on." You can really lose sight of the big picture that way.

Was there a lot of material that didn't make it onto Kill the Moonlight?

There were probably another 12 songs written that we didn't record...either because Jim [Eno, Spoon's drummer and co-producer] didn't like them, or we just didn't know how we would do them right or whatever. I was just listening to the demos before I left and realized that there was some really good stuff that we just didn't work on.

Where do you want to see your career go?

I just don't really have any expectations of that kind of stuff. The most important thing to me in music is records. I mean, a live show is a great experience, but something that's really close to my heart are albums that you want to listen to over and over again...and mean something to you....and keep going back to. To me, the best measure of success is to make a record that's good. And I feel like we've done that on three of them. So, that's pretty good.