makingof parts and lay them out. But I’m usually cool with whatever gets thrown at me and then I’ll just try to throw a bunch of squirrels in it. That’s generally my operating procedure. The sampling thing was weird, I have to admit. I can’t say I was into it at the time, but I think it worked out well, just because it was used fairly judiciously and not an overwhelming thing. And of course, the weird sound of the band comes through however we approach stuff. There are general elements that, no matter how far afield we take it, it tends to wind up in the same ballpark. McEntire: We could see tons of potential in everything, but it was slightly frustrating because we had committed to working in this new way and we were still learning the ropes on the technical end of some of it. It did feel like there was a learning curve involved, for sure, but once we finally got out of the woods, it was super exciting to realize we’d taken our core sound and twisted it in a really interesting way. Prekop: The band was evolving really quickly during that time, so it wasn’t something that we thought about so much. We didn’t think, “Oh, we’ve got to do something else.” I feel like we’re always guided by innate intentions and gut feelings about what we do, so it’s never a point of fulfilling a concept before we go into it. I’m quite sure we were excited in that it sounded pretty different. For “There You Are,” we lifted a straight loop; I don’t think we felt like people in rock bands were doing things like that, and it seemed pretty wild that we thought it would be okay for a rock band to do that. And on “The Argument,” John programmed the beats, and that seemed like a totally alien concept; it was pretty early on in the jungle movement, and a little of that was leaking over to the States, and I think some of those ideas were put into the drum programming at the beginning of “The Argument.” And that seemed alien and peculiar and exciting. And it took forever. Were there songs that you felt particularly close to in this process? Claridge: “Bird and Flag” probably stands
out as the one. That one just came out; I started playing it immediately. It was one of those weird things, like something in the brain that you’re not really attached to just pops, and it flowed out. That one stands out to me. A lot of them were that way for me— everything was kind of off the cuff. I know we got together and practiced, but back in those days especially, I felt [like] the lesser of the group, especially in terms of the rhythm sec-
tion, because John is so freaking good. I’ve always been trying to live up to a standard I doubt I’ll come close to. “The Argument” is pretty good, “The Sporting Life” is totally bizarre, one of those weird things where I pushed the song into a different kind of feel for no particular reason. McEntire: Well, the obvious ones were “The Sporting Life” and “The Argument.” But I think there are a lot of really great downtempo tracks that have a lot of cool subtle stuff going on, and a lot of it was the result of trial and error and some dumb luck, and I think the whole project coalesced in a really interesting way.
The Biz was us locking into the sound. The Fawn was us walking away from that, or screwing with it considerably.” —eric claridge
The Fawn is clearly more textural and atmospheric. Did it feel like you were being guided by different influences and inspirations? Prewitt: I think Sam was listening to a lot of
different things, as he always does, and John and I were, too, to a lesser degree. Sam was turning me onto Aphex Twin’s home recordings, and we’ve always liked a lot of dub and early reggae, like Lee Scratch Perry. We were all listening to a lot of Morricone via John; we were listening to a lot of experimental early ’70s Brazilian records, so there was a lot of listening and discussion. We’d take a dinner break and we’d rush out to what used to be record stores and CD stores, and buy a bunch of records, like, “I know this song has a really good snippet of drum work,” or “We should grab this Chaka Khan and Rufus record and grab this one spot,” so we’d grab that loop and start working again. It was exciting; it was like, “Oh, I know what to do on top of
that.” And it was, “Shut up, Prewitt.” I’m Mr. Kitchen Sink, I think. But it was fun to be really fluid about the whole thing; there was definitely a sort of devil-may-care attitude going into it. Prekop: It was probably close to when we were hearing Brazilian music, although we weren’t really able to tap into those ideas or that influence until later. I’m almost positive that it was around that time where I first heard a record by João Donato. Early on, there was a guy in Chicago who was bringing in bootlegs of rare, obscure Brazilian records, and this was before most people were paying attention to this kind of stuff. I remember it specifically just taking my head off; I just couldn’t believe it. The other thing is that I have to give John a lot of credit for exposing me to a whole lot of stuff, like Neu! and even Kraftwerk, and even something as basic as the Beach Boys. I had always been opposed to the Beach Boys because I was only familiar with the radio hits, so I have to hand it to John for educating me over the years. And a lot of new things have not quite deliberately become touchstones for the band and part of our language. Hats off to John. McEntire: That’s a tough one. I do remember around that time that there was an explosion of consciousness in terms of outside music, especially with regard to Brazil. That was a big revelation, to get exposure to all that stuff and realize how amazing it was. That was certainly something in the air at that time, and just diving more seriously into things like Morricone and all of the Italian film composers. I don’t know how much of that comes through directly, the fact that we were probably more aware of different kinds of things, even if they weren’t current, necessarily, but just having that all swirling around in the atmosphere I think was helpful. Well, to channel the wisdom of the great Geddy Lee, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
McEntire: [Laughs] Exactly.
Did The Fawn feel like a crossroads album, at the time or in retrospect? Prewitt: Yeah, but we didn’t say, “Okay,
this is the direction we need to go.” I’ve read things like, “They did The Fawn—why didn’t they keep growing in that direction?” I don’t know. We’ve always just developed the records we want to make without a whole lot of thought about it. We could have gotten more electronic, and some records employ that liberally and others don’t. I do think it 29