Interview with Jason Stollsteimer (Von Bondies) – Part 1

Several years ago, when The Von Bondies scored a major label deal, it seemed like an auspicious kick-start to one of the city’s most talented bands. However, signing to a major in the midst of the sea change of the record industry caused the band to get bogged in A&R hell, and it was years before we heard from them again.

VB frontman Jason Stollsteimer recently talked with MCR about their happy new independent label home as well as their upcoming tour in support of  Love, Hate, and Then There’s You, which kicks off Saturday, February 21st at Ann Arbor’s Blind Pig (check out MCR’s review of the new album Von Bondies Detroit Rock” href=”http://www.motorcityrocks.com/2009/02/album-review-love-hate-von-bondies.htm”>here.)

When you look at Lack Of Communication from the earlier days, there’s definitely a rawer sound than your newer material. When I first heard you, I thought it was very dangerous-sounding.

We didn’t know how to play! It was Jim Diamond– he produced that, and we just recorded it live. We had three days of studio time. Like the song “Nite Train”, nobody really notices, but the bass goes deeper and deeper out of tune.

At that time, I didn’t own a Stooges record. I wasn’t really a rock fan at all. I grew up listening to Pavement, Archers of Loaf, The Make-Up. I like music that’s not guitar-based, which is messed up because we’re a guitar based-band. I grew up listening to D.C. stuff, stuff that’s not about the energy. When you don’t know how to play your instrument at first– like The Stooges– it’s about pure energy.

If you can’t come up with good harmony you have to be able to play hard and fast– get your two minute song done, don’t make anyone bored. There’s no reason to play more than half an hour in your first four years. I was recently at a house party and this great new Detroit band Lightning Love played for 15 minutes and everybody booed because they didn’t play longer. That’s a good sign.

So you wound up opening for The Stooges for their reunion show–

For me it was different because I still didn’t have any of the records. I knew who Iggy Pop is, I knew the Asheton brothers. It was weird. When they started playing, security came out and you couldn’t move around backstage. So on the right hand side was all of the Von Bondies. On the left hand side was Iggy’s girlfriend, who is this bodybuilder woman who was holding her dog, and then me. I got stuck, and I couldn’t get back to my friends. So I’m sitting there with this woman I don’t know who could beat me up, and she had to go to the bathroom, so she hands me this tiny little Tinkerbell dog, and right at that moment they played “I Wanna Be Your Dog”!

How’d you get hooked up with that gig?

We were requested. It was good, but when people go to see something like a reunion, they don’t care about the opening band. If right now, Coldplay asked us to open for them, I’d do one show. I’m not going to tour with them because that’d be depressing. To do a tour with a big band is expensive; the big bands fly from show to show and you have to do 20-hour drives a day. We never tried to break into the mainstream audience. We were trying to get to the 1,200-seater level and stay there. And then we did, and then we took a break because we got stuck in a record label that we couldn’t get out of.

What happened with that?

We didn’t get dropped: we walked away. One guy at Sire– who no longer works there– would not release our record. It took us two and a half years to get him to say, “it’s not emo enough, and that’s why”. We gave them “Pale Bride” and all the singles exactly the way they are, and he said “I don’t hear any singles.” The reason I’m at a typewriter [on the cover] is because they forced me to work with two songwriters and I freaked out and didn’t write anything for a year.

Seymour Stein [who signed the band] didn’t know we were being held back. The other guy, he had no intention of releasing us because he knew that if we got signed with another label and did well, he’d get fired. They asked us to be with them again, but I said no. I want to be on a label where I can be on a record cover with a gun to the back of my head and not have to put a sticker over the gun.

You guys kind of formed on the edge of the record label era. Now bands have a lot more creative control, granted they don’t drive around in Ferraris. I think in the long run this will be better for musicians.

We had the last deal over like, a hundred grand at Warner Bros. The way it was in the late Nineties, there’s no chance for a band to develop. Nowadays there’s chance for the band to develop. But, it’s up to us to find a practice space. We just went to New York for three days to do a press run and I paid for it. We went to Toronto to play MTV Canada and I had to pay to get there. The record label just picks the singles.

The music video for new single “Pale Bride” is pretty cool. Where was that shot?

The live shots are in my friend’s welding shop. You know how it’s kind of dusty-looking? While we were shooting the video one of the guys who was working the camera went behind us and would sweep up metal shavings. So, we were breathing metal the whole time. I was coughing for a week! When I go through a metal detector, it’s going to go off. It was shot by Anthony Garth, who also did our video for “It Came From Japan”. It was a budget of two grand for that video, and it’s already on MTV2 and Fuse. Nowadays you can’t spend too much money on it because MTV just has reality television.

Videos on YouTube are big, though. Look at what the Electric Six did for the last couple albums, they were just making videos in their backyard.

It’s a funny example. Electric Six has so many people at their shows. We sold 200,000 records, but I don’t think 200,000 people saw us on tour. With Electric Six, their last record sold like a few thousand, but they get like a thousand people a show. It’s the opposite!

There were certain bands that you could tell could relate to the next level; that you could take this and make a product that you could sell. You guys were definitely one of them.

It may be because we were listening to more mainstream music when we were kids. I like Radiohead. I have no problem admitting that. I think the guy in Coldplay can sing like hell. I think Kelly Clarkston’s “Since U Been Gone” is a catchy song. I don’t think some bands can admit that. That can affect your ability to relate to the masses.

Butch Walker, who you worked with during the recording process for the new record, is a good example of a catchy songwriter.

I lived with him in Malibu right before his house burned down. He was leasing a house from Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We recorded “Pale Bride” in the basement there. Right after I left it burned down in those dry fires they get out there. We were the last record recorded there, I guess.

I went to Butch with one song done and two songs that I had verses and choruses, but I was in a slump from the label. He said these two songs were done, we don’t even have to think about the verses and choruses, they just needed a bridge. I would start playing the main riff from a song and he’d come up with a keyboard part. He didn’t write anything.

Some people were saying that there was a lot of “ghostwriting” going on.

Don is the only “ghostwriter”, he wrote two songs. When I went in with one of the two songwriters [that Sire assigned], his studio was one acoustic guitar, a keyboard, a ProTools rig, and a microphone. No electric guitars, no amps, no drum set. I have nothing against him, but it just didn’t make any sense to me. I played him this ballad I had in parts, and he said, “Come back tomorrow and I’ll have it done.” I came back the next day and it was like, an amazing Sheryl Crow song. No one will ever hear that song. That would have been ghostwriting, but it will never see the light of day. It was almost ghostwriting, and it was against my will.

On the new record, I think you could almost have a radio hit with “Earthquake” if you didn’t swear on it!

That was Don. The only line he wrote was a swearing line, and I was like, “Don, I’ve never swore in a song!” Don swears. He swears like a filthy pirate. That song is going to be hard to fit with the rest of the set because it’s so poppy. I said to Don, if we’re going to do this poppy song, the lyrics have to be really fucked up, they have to be mean, they have to be angry.

What do you guys have planned for the future as far as the tour?

February through March is the US tour. We’re going to Europe in April. We’re doing SXSW again. We’re touring with Nico Vega, they’re kind of like a mix between Yeah Yeah Yeahs and this band called The Peels. A girl lead singer with a guitar player and a drummer. She wears like, a leotard on stage. They’re a really good band and she has a beautiful voice.

* Artwork By Leyland DeVito

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