Lach & The Secrets - London, UK, Spring 2004
By: Toby L, Cat Goodwin
We can't tell if it's a threat. 'This is our first, official interview with the whole band together,' a glasses-sporting, demonically grinning NYC stalwart croaks. He then eyes us through thick, black frames and proffers a stare that says the rest: 'Make it good.'
OK, Lach - we'll try. For you can't f**k about on something like this - a man possibly more documented, revered and synonymous amidst inner musical-circles than you could possibly care to realise. Lach is the punk-rock forefather, creator and cultivator of New York's anti-folk racket: a largely acoustic-based, poetic scene embraced and expunged via personnel of all shapes, sizes and vivid peculiarity that unite in his own live-nights, The Fort, at the Sidewalk Cafe, NY. The doors of the humble premises have seen much clatter over the years, a loving will to express conducted always under the encouraging, watchful eye of a man that began it.
Anti-folk: that thing that came about a few seasons back with the emergence of all things New York, and Moldy Peaches? Not so - it's celebrating its twentieth anniversary now, y'know: a miniature movement of typically solo fe/male performers that foster grit in their hearts and a humble way with a battered 'strument. It's not about how you play - it's what you say. (Want more? Research the output of Fortified Records - erm, a label that is actually owned by, well, Lach. Talk about monopoly).
The 20th anniversary in mind, Lach is upping the ante somewhat. After innumerable, acclaimed solo records - namely, 'Kids Fly Free': an autonomous, multifarious, compulsively arranged, yet scintillatingly lo-fi, range of humour-laden ditties and, in part, epic declaration - his latest to not so much drop as free-fall is 'Today': a self-confessedly stripped-back representation of Lach and his backing-act The Secrets. It's a defiant marker of the trio's exhilarating, normally unabashed and impossible-to-anticipate live-show - one perhaps commendable upon its blend of the loose, untied, live spirit of ramshackle busking or an open-mic night with the charisma, musicality and songs of rock's greatest, most famed ancestors.
And of the 'backing-act' - we have some more heroes of our time. On bass, Roy Edroso of Lower East Side hell-raisers The Reverb Motherf**kers (as if the name wasn't a hint), and - drums - Billy Ficca: simply one of punk's most important names and talents following his time in Television. Being in all three's company, amongst the setting of a dingy Camden pub, is both disconcertingly humbling and an all-too-seldom, inspired history-lesson.
So how has their past week of UK gallivanting been?
'Well, we were here with the whole band a couple of years ago, when 'Kids...' was released. This time 'round, it's been eight shows in eight nights,' Lach drawls half-excitedly, half-dazed, embracing the prospect of this evening's final shout at the Barfly.
You can certainly see and behold the effects of intensive touring in a compressed time-span; colds are abound, Edroso spending as much time contributing to a proceeding hour of chat as he is nursing his nose to a crumpled, soggying tissue.
'We've got good people working hard with us; that helps,' pronounces Ficca of the dates, one leg suavely crossed, his head awash in a cloud of cigarette-smoke.
'As far as memories, it's already such a blur,' Lach ponders.
'Steve getting the beers and us freezing was pretty cool,' Ficca smirks.
Huh?
'Steve is our tour-manager,' explains Lach eagerly, 'and we were performing upstairs in a pub in Oxford. Steve went downstairs in the middle of the set to get beers for the band, so I whispered into the microphone, 'When he comes back into the room - everybody freeze...' And we all practiced. So we started 'Air That I Breathe' by The Hollies and just toward the end of the song, Steve entered with a tray of beers, and I just froze, so did the audience - everyone. He didn't even really notice. He put the tray of beers down, passed them out, and we started playing again. It couldn't have been scripted better.'
Such reliance on ad-lib in a live-performance - it melds and crafts the Lach mantle, a confidence that surely can only be provided by true veterans of performance. But calling them such a title is the first of a couple of f**k-ups we make.
Lach huffs. 'You call us 'veterans', like I was in World War I.'
'It's another word for 'old',' suspects Roy.
'It's cool - it means I get discounts at stores, like for drum-sticks,' Billy sniggers.
C'mon, lads; it's a term of endearment - recognition of your sustained, still-active quality intact. But, after so many years of gigging, where/how does the fire light?
'The energy's always there,' Roy retorts.
'It's important not to do too much before the gig,' advises Billy. 'Don't talk a lot with socialites.'
'Especially in interviews,' Lach grins.
Perhaps disdainfully to our assumptions, Billy Ficca announces, 'Normally, I sleep.'
Lach goes along a similar line. 'If people backstage want to meet us before a show, we look like three people waiting for a bus. We're not throwing TVs out of hotel-rooms. We just sit there, stare at a wall, and mumble incoherently. We've never had a problem where we've not got the energy from the audience, but we do feed off each other, the music itself and not knowing what's going to happen. If there's a game you like to play, it's always going to be different every time you play the game, no matter who's watching. People keep telling us to 'knock 'em dead', but, quite often, people arrive dead. We try to knock them alive.'
'Lach is pretty good at reading the audience,' acknowledges Edroso. 'He watches the room and reacts, and the show becomes about that. Sometimes, when the initial signs are negative, those can be the most fun shows - (turning to the man) like that gig you did in Brooklyn, where there was a guy sitting in the audience reading a paper, and wouldn't stop, so Lach went right up to him and ripped the paper right from his hands. He was stunned.'
Backing this up, Lach explains, 'We don't like people with their hands in their pockets just voyeuristically watching us - we like them to know we're there.'
And is this some form of rebelling against the holier than thou stance which many zeitgeist-fuelled musos adopt when segregating themselves from the crowd through way of crippling arrogance or pretension?
'There is that attitude to bands,' nods Billy. 'I don't know if it's conscious for some of them - maybe it is - but, either way, it's not like that for us. We never have a set-list.'
'Sometimes we just have to walk over and beat up the audience,' Lach adds, deadpan, before an illustrative bark. 'WAKE UP, YOU F**KS!'
'One thing is we're not doing this to get something,' he persists. 'A lot of bands go onstage thinking they're going to get something from the audience, or get a good review, or get a record-deal, or make a connection... It's always about trying to get something. We have what we want - we play music, we write songs, we have lives. I'm not trying to get a record-deal - I have a f**king record-company; we're just here to give. That's why we have fun onstage - because we're not trying to manipulate or work something; we just want to have a good time and communicate what we want to....'
Billy: '... Which gives us a lot of room for spontaneity.'
'These are also pretty important times,' the centrepiece of it all outlines. 'I guess all times are important, but especially more-so these current ones. Living in New York at the moment is like living in a bomb-shelter. It's not really the land of the free - it's the land of the hypnotised and the scared. Our information is being filtered.
'So us being able to come over here and meet people on a one-on-one and sing songs like 'Former President Bush' and 'I Love America, But You Don't Love Me', it might make people say, 'Oh, wait, it's not like what the newspapers are saying, or how that media conduit is telling it to us. In the sixties, you used to get a Dylan record to see just what was actually going on. The same happened with the punk movement with The Clash - that's what was giving you the news about what happened in your culture. We're hoping to be a part of that long line of information-exchange, trying to learn and teach at the same time. As well as rock the shit out of people.'
Billy maintains the historical reference-points. 'John Lennon had this vision about writing a song and having it formatted to make the meaning available to the public, so a song would come across like a newspaper or magazine, musically.'
Well, the overall term for such an influential niche/clique of music - the ghastly, but necessary 'alternative' - is a depiction of music that bears a potential to subvert, to educate, to demonstrate... Seemingly, they're aiming to prolong this mindset?
'But I don't think we're subversive,' Lach notes, shaking his head. 'I think governments are subversive.'
Using popular music as a parallel, Edroso states, 'People are either going to catch on to the fact that some musical products are, primarily, products and, secondarily, music and art. I don't think we're a product in that sense - when we step out onstage, we want to create something that involves everybody.'
'That's why,' Lach rebounds, 'at the end of the set, I give my pick to someone in the audience that may want to play on my guitar, so they're a part of what's going on.'
Roy: 'On subversion being against that pop thing, I think it's a leading by example situation; it's not like we're going to say, 'You shouldn't listen to Britney Spears, because she sucks.' The reality is you can eat McDonald's for the rest of your life, or you can sit down and have a nice, home-cooked meal.'
And, mmm-hmm, Lach & The Secrets are one big bastard treat of a feast. The secret recipe? This time, 'Today' seems all about minimalism speaking volumes.
But... '... It wasn't about making it more accessible,' details Lach. 'The previous albums were called 'eclectic', and that's always a drag; people say, 'So, what are you - are you this, or are you that?' I mean, listen to 'The White Album' - all good songs, all different, but the same band.
'When we played on the last tour over here, playing every night, it gave us a relationship as a band-band. So as we went into the studio, I really wanted us to be recorded as a band, to capture the feel of the band as much as possible. It was stripped-down. We made rules before we went in - no brass, no strings, no synthesizers. 'Kids Fly Free' has a 25-person chorus singing. It was a scaled-down, very immediate sort of thing this time. Most of the stuff you hear is of us live in the studio, even with bleed-throughs on the mics; there's very little baffling on it.'
Rather erroneously, again, we miss the point, and ask the maestro if he's happy having created a warmer outing.
'Warm?' he splutters. 'Is it? Shit!' He slams his hand down on the nearest table. 'I wanted it to be cold!'
It's certainly 'intimate', though, we add, attempting to partially redeem ourselves.
'OK, intimate,' he semi-agrees.
And stark.
Lach's eyes alight. We've struck it. 'Stark - that's what I wanted. When we went into the studio, I told the engineer, 'You've created this really warm environment - it's organic, great for acoustic stuff... How do we change that?' So we put plywood all over the place, to sharpen it, to give it a slap. We wanted it to be an elbow in the eye. Nothing analog, nothing on tape. I wanted it to sound like how the band would sound when touring; if you listen to the previous record and then saw us live, you'd be like, 'Hey - where's all that stuff?' But if you hear 'Parade' on 'Today', and then hear it live, it's pretty much what you hear, bar the organ.'
Again, is this not yet another revolt from our master and The Secrets - against contemporary recording-technique and a higher, ever-strengthening consensus of glossy over-production? Possibly.
Lach admits, 'I've never liked hearing music where it sounds like the machines are making the music.'
'Apart from Kraftwerk,' raises Roy defensively. 'They're OK.'
'I also like hearing the musician's work on albums - like a mistake if it's got the feel. I also like music if it makes me feel like I do it; Led Zeppelin - even though there's no way I could play like Page, I hear them playing, as if I can be a part of it.'
You quote the classics - is your music an affirmation for the ideals of such past eras, an antithesis to what's going on today?
'I don't listen to what's going on,' confesses Lach.
'Nor do I,' murmurs Ficca.
Roy is last. 'Or me. You get to a certain stage in life where most people's minds won't be changed, and they certainly won't be changed while we lecture about how immoral things are.'
Lach is clearly more idealistic. 'But art can change people.'
Roy finds the middle-ground. 'Well, it can get to them if they have anything to get at.'
'I don't have a TV,' refers the singer. 'I got rid of it this year. And I haven't listened to radio in years - there's barely anything good in New York, apart from a few small college-stations that are OK. So most of the stuff that I hear is at the Sidewalk Cafe. Stuff I hear is my contemporaries on the scene and the songs they wrote that week - whether it's Major Matt Mason, Kimya (Dawson, part-time Moldy Peach), whoever, there's so many great people. I hear all that stuff at night when I go out.
'I mean, I still haven't even heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, apart from maybe a couple of thirty-second clips on the Apple store. Actually, when the Apple got set up, I listened to Jet, The Darkness, The Walkmen, The Hives... I thought that some of the stuff was quite exciting, but they were recreating period-pieces in a way.'
'The Rock 'N' Roll Preservation Society,' grins Roy smugly.
'I would hear one or two of these bands and think, 'OK, that's cool to hear, and I like that - and I sure liked it when The Kinks did it in October of 1966,' laughs Lach. 'A lot of the stuff is talking about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in the lyrics... I've already tripped 300 times on acid: I don't need to take it anymore. So when people are like, 'Let's go out and get f**ked up tonight,' I'm like, 'And then what? My government's taking away my rights, none of my friends have jobs and the new art-form is 'Let's drink'?' F**k you!'
Something as ongoing, non-commercially threatened - and thus sacred? - as anti-folk: any worries it'll swiftly burn out under the pressure to reinvent itself or progress?
'Anti-folk has been going for 20 years now,' responds Lach. 'When the scene first hit, there was Roger Manning and Kirk Kelly that got signed to SST, and then people were like, 'Oh, the scene's going to change.' Paleface got signed, Beck got a big hit, and every time, people got paranoid about it losing itself. But then, the next couple of weeks, you'll get a new water that comes into the well - and it's new to them, and the cycle starts all over again. For lack of a better term, the graduating-class with The Moldy Peaches were Jeffrey Lewis, Major Matt, Regina Spektor, but now there's a whole new crew that's in there - bands like Cheese On Bread. People think, 'Oh - anti-folk: punk acoustic-guitar.' But Toby Goodshank has a gentle voice. It's more about an attitude, evaluating a person's message, rather than their technical ability.'
'The term 'movement' is always a difficult thing - is it not just a coincidence such a thing begins with similar artists at the same time,' asks Ficca of his band-mate when regarding a spread of acts that lurk and reside in the same pack, soon titled a 'scene'.
'Well,' returns Lach, 'you did it with punk in '77.'
Billy agrees. 'As an example, they (outsiders) put everyone together: Television, The Ramones, Talking Heads; generally, at places like CB's (CBGB's), the only same motivation was to do something different, in your own style, in the same open environment. That was the most important thing - there wasn't a rigid style. Being a punk wasn't to be a nasty person that bothered people; being a punk was, 'I don't really play guitar very well, but - f**k it - I'm going to get up there and do it anyway.' That, to me, was what it was about.'
'Before I started the anti-folk scene in the early 80s, me, or people like me, we were shunned and physically kicked out of clubs - not because we were stealing or anything - but because of the attitude onstage,' Lach reminisces. 'Playing an acoustic guitar really fast - it was seen as abusing it or something.
'The great thing about the scene and the club is that we'll have someone come from another city and they'll play the kind of music they've played which got them shunned from other places, that's punk-influenced or is on an acoustic and not commercially acceptable, and they play their set fast, run off, and we catch them up and say, 'No - we liked it! Come back in!''
Contagiously stimulated via their presence, we prompt memories of their first formation and what ignited the inception as a triumvirate. They're left flummoxed.
'I don't remember,' gulps Billy.
'I don't exactly know,' muses Lach.
Roy, meanwhile: 'We all just lived in the same town; a sleepy little hamlet called New York City.'
Lach attempts to re-familiarise himself. 'Well, Roy was in an amazing, great band called The Reverb Motherf**kers, and they were outrageous; there was one show where, I don't remember if it was all of them, but the lead-singer was wearing diapers?'
Roy remains stone-faced. 'We used to strip off sometimes, yeah.'
'It was complete anarchy,' he proceeds. 'They were drunk, running into each other, falling on the ground on glass. But somehow, it'd gel into fantastic music - there'd be this madness, but - also - great songs. It'd be like, 'How the f**k did they do that?!'
'The way I remember meeting Billy, meanwhile, I was opening up for bands he was playing in. I remember we did a tour up to Canada, where I was opening solo, the other band playing with him as drummer, and I'd come onstage to play so we'd all be together as the encore. Me and Billy would get this glint in our eyes where it was more about me and him playing together, at least I felt. Eventually, we started playing even more; I don't even remember how or when exactly it became more cement.'
Billy has just had a flashback. 'It was the initial, 'Come to the Sidewalk, and hang out, bring your bongos and maybe join in.''
'Yeah,' recounts Lach, 'I used to say to people, 'If you know my songs, come play.' So I'd run into people like Billy and ask them to bring their bongos or whatever, and, on the night, call the band 'The Secrets' because I'd never know who would show up... Roy, did you play a gig at Sidewalk?'
'Yeah, I did a solo gig of my own,' Edroso answers, 'and you mentioned, 'Do you want to come and sit in with me?' And I said, 'Sure,' because I said that to everybody. But I came in, and went to your apartment and played again, and it worked; we got Billy in, and it worked. And I can't lie to you - playing with Billy is one of the great things about the whole experience, as a bass-player with such a drummer.'
'What's great also is that the communication is really strong,' contextualises Lach philosophically. 'We were playing at Sidewalk, he had his snare, his ride-tom, a floor-tom, and I divided my strings into pairs, so one pair became his floor-tom, the other his ride-tom, and the top two strings were his snare... and when we were going into our, oh, for the lack of a better term, 'jam session', every time he moved on the drum, I'd move on the pair of strings I was playing. And it was ridiculous, but fun. It's similar to the sort of communication that great bands such as The Who have between the guitars and drums. Billy's the only drummer I've played with that listens to the lyrics - and knows the lyrics. Lyrically, he does a sound-sculpture on the drums that I can tell has been influenced by the words.'
And to The Secrets, what appeal lies in their leader?
'He's got a cute little butt.' Roy is strangely believable.
'He's funny,' smiles Billy faintly. 'He makes me laugh.'
Roy makes up for his last remark. 'If you're playing music for a long time, you think, 'Why aren't more people writing songs; it seems valuable - people like them, why don't more people write them? Lach writes them all the time, consistently. Lach also, though a singer-songwriter, won't say (adopts authoritarian German accent), 'Play my muzik like 'zis!' It's a rare combination where you can have such a strong leading-force and a band that sounds so fluid musically. That's extremely rare.'
This is still not enough for some. Ask them what they're not so happy about, and...
'The only regret I've got about my records is that I've never heard them high,' Lach raises, quite intriguingly. 'Because all these records have been done since I've stopped using drink and drugs. I remember there was a scene in a Rolling Stones movie where they're mixing 'Brown Sugar' or something, and Keith's on the ground with a burning cigarette and it looks like he's in heaven listening back to the track. I wish I could get stoned and listen back to the records. I'm interested to see what people think of my records when they listen to them stoned, if they work.
'I get an impetus to make an album because I'm not hearing what I want to hear. And I'm astounded that I don't. I remember when Oasis came out, and everyone was saying, 'You gotta hear 'em,' and I heard a beautiful sonic quality and this wonderful pop sound oozing out. So I got the record and I put it on, and it sounds great - then I read the lyrics and I was like, 'F**king hell, there's nothing here.' It's just a major disappointment that I'm like, 'F**k it, I guess I have to make a record.' That's why I'm scared to get the lyrics for 'The Stone Roses' - I love that first album of theirs so much, but I can't understand a word they're saying. So I'm never going to read the lyrics. I'll hear The Clash, though, and read the lyrics and say, 'Right on, motherf**ker.'
And, you: how do you write songs?
'It depends. I sometimes write songs onstage, inspired by the mood or asking what people want to hear. Sometimes I've dreamt a song and woken up and written it down. But when I decided or realised I was a songwriter, or whatever, when I was sixteen, I'd just created a songwriter's body, I almost created a consciousness to write songs. So, when information comes into me from the outside world, emotions, feelings, the way I deal with it, I let it come out. I get out of the way - I've created the body, and I let it come out. Most of my songs are written really quickly, but they've been gestating for a long time in a body of consciousness waiting to be created... Does that make any sense?'
Of course, he's pertinently lucid.
'I usually bring a song into the band,' he continues, 'play it once in rehearsal, they start playing along, and then we all make suggestions. Billy's a very good arranger; he may sometimes say, 'Instead of doing that intro, why not do that?' So I may bring in the song, but they're able to refine it. These guys are so good. There's 150 years of rock 'n' roll in us. When you're done with the boy-bands, move up to us - the men.'
And why this rather than anything else?
Lach is almost frustrated by the thought of such an intrusion. 'It's like asking someone, 'What makes you want to breathe?' he dramatises.
Billy steps forth. 'I started playing drums in elementary school, when I was twelve or thirteen. All my life, I was inspired by something to play music, then proceeded to focus on individual players - like all the great jazz-drummers. Then, after a while, you become part of it, you become all of those things that inspired you in the first place.'
'I started playing music when I was five - playing classical piano 'til I was sixteen,' Lach begins. 'I got so high off playing, it put me into a different world. I'd read interviews with various rockers, like Gene Simmons of Kiss, and he says, 'Don't let anybody fool you - the only reason people pick up a guitar is for pussy and money,' and I'm like, 'No, that never occurred to me.'
'Though that'd be nice,' dreams Roy.
'Well,' fumbles Lach, 'yeah. But I do it because I love songs so much - every time I'm able to write a song and feel good from it, a track like 'Antenna' from the current one: it's a special moment. I just felt this joy, an electric charge. It's so weird... What is a song - where does it come from? Five seconds before a song is written, where was it? The thing that came out of this weird, nothing place somehow came through me, I wrote it, now other people are hearing it, and singing along and talking about it... It's so weird and mysterious and magical, and I love being a part of the whole process.'
'Music just doesn't disappoint me,' Roy states matter-of-factly. The thing on the gatefold of 'Quadrophenia' about the list of things that have been let-downs - well, the older I get, the more things let me down, and I'll give you the full list some time, but playing music has never let me down.'
'Yes. Even when I'm singing a love song onstage,' romances Lach, 'it's about music.'
Whoa, we conclude. That was all a little bit deep.
Lach is able to place a satisfying boot in to an earlier remark of ours. And he's all the more loveable for it.
'Well,' he drawls for a final time, 'when you talk to a bunch of veterans, we will get a bit deep sometimes.'
Praise them for it.