| |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 Collin Hegna, Oregon born and bred, is the good looking bass player with The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Much more than a pretty face, he happens to be friendly, engaging and have a tendency to delight European crowds with German jokes [in German] about Michael Jackson and teenagers, whether he is in Germany or elsewhere!
Interestingly and a total departure from his time with The BJM, Collin also writes soundtrack music for imaginary movies with his band Federale.
Really worth checking out, Federale is what I want to talk to him about but first I need to know how it all started with the magnificent seven, Aka Anton, Joel, Ricky...
Florence: Hi Collin!
You’re finally home after a few weeks on the road.
Tell me about the last show of the tour which was in New York.
How did it feel to play to an American audience, to be back on American soil?
Collin: Things got easier somehow for us and we played a bunch of stuff that we hadn’t played for a while and we let loose a bit.
It probably was our best show!
Florence: In Portland you’re a member of a band called Federale but you’re best known for playing the bass with The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
How did it all start? How did you get with Anton and the guys?
Collin: With my friend Ryan Sumner [who sadly passed away] we had a band in Portland called Cocaine Unicorn and we played some kind of early Velvet Underground. We would play shows with The Out Crowd, Matt Hollywood’s band, and we opened for The Warlocks a couple of times and The BJM...
About three years ago, as The BJM had a tour coming up, the drummer [Daniel Allaire] and the bass player quit, so Anton put a thing on friendster.com, saying that he needed a couple of people...Ryan saw that and responded to it and volunteered me for the job, [without asking me!], Anton called Matt to see if we were good enough and Matt vouched for us and a week later we drove down to LA and that was that!
Basically it was through the wonders of friendster.com, back in the Friendster age.
We did one tour and it didn’t really work out with Ryan drumming and Anton ended up getting Dan back, but I stayed on.
Florence: Just looking at this year you’ve spent hell of a lot of time on the road with the guys. What are the high points of touring for you?
 Collin: The highlights for me are the days off!
Florence: We better not tell Anton...
Collin: I love playing but when you’re in Europe all you do is hang out on the bus and you don’t get any time to see anything or experience the culture so I really enjoy the days off. We had one in Italy, Lake Garda, and Lutzern in Switzerland during the summer, that was gorgeous.
Florence: You also did Carcassonne twice.
Collin: I love to relax and hang out with my friends.
As far as shows go, the last one we did in London, at The Astoria, was very good. We thought that it was important to put our best foot forward as this was a big show for us.
Florence: On the second tour of the year you’ve played much bigger venues. It must be really satisfying for the band to know that you can come back to Europe a few months after the first tour and have even more people wanting to see you live?
Collin: Things have changed in the last couple of years, quite a bit.
When I first joined the band we were playing in the middle of nowhere, in the south of The States, to twenty people, and it had been that way for a very long time.
There’s always been people who liked the music and we do it, not because we want to become rich or famous or any of that crap, but because we love it.
But certainly, as a result of the movie [Dig!], things have changed...
The movie has enabled people to experience the music in a way that probably would not have happened otherwise.
It’s not that we’re any different that we ever were. We’ve always been the same but it’s just that more people are checking us out!
Anton has his opinion about the movie but I don’t think that there is anything else that brought the band to a wider audience.
Florence: The downside is that people who have discovered The BJM with Dig! might turn up to a gig expecting more than music!
That was a different place and a different time for Anton, and it just doesn’t happen anymore. Things have changed just as they should have.
Collin: People want a ‘Dig! moment’.
All that footage, and I’m sure it’s been said by other people, is over a long period of time.
Florence: And some of it is ten years old.
Anyway...on a different subject, when you’re not part of The BJM, you’ve got your own band, Federale.
Do you get to do some writing?
Collin: With Federale I write most of the music. Carl Werner writes some of it and sometimes we collaborate. We have a writing partnership!
Florence: For people who don’t know about it, what you do is very interesting and different.
You brand it as ‘movie soundtrack’ music and it’s very much Ennio Morricone influenced.
Was there a point when you were a little boy, watching ‘Western’ movies when you thought that you could write that kind of music?
Collin: Maybe subconsciously. I never consciously thought about it.
I grew up in Oregon where my grandfather had a farm and I spent a lot of time out in the desert or going fishing. The outdoors were a big part of my life and I really like how ‘The West’ is romanticised, specially in Spaghetti Westerns and I always thought that was the best score music I’d ever heard, especially any of Morricone’s scores.
I guess we started writing music in that style because we didn’t thing that there was anything like that anymore.
Florence: Ennio Morricone had a long association with Sergio Leone. Is there a director you would love to team up with?
Collin: There are a couple of directors like...Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez that come to mind but I’m hoping to find someone as of yet unknown!
To work together and create something of our own, that would be interesting and that’s the angle that I’m going for.
Florence: Until you find your own Sergio Leone will you be releasing records?
 Collin: We’re going into the studio to have our first record, ‘La Rayar’ mastered on Saturday and then do a ‘self-release’ and send it out to people. We don’t have a traditional ‘Rock band’ way of thinking in what we are trying to do. We want to make music for movies, we don’t want to tour and do the whole rock band thing. Primarily it’s a studio project.
This record will be our first try at showing what we can do and what we want to do in the future. It’s by no means an end in itself, it’s more of a calling card.
Florence: You’ve just mentioned not wanting to tour and presumably this kind of music doesn’t lend itself very well to live performances anyway but as a performer wouldn’t you miss being on stage, playing live and getting instant feedback from your audience?
Don’t you strive on performing live?
Collin: I get plenty of that playing with The Brian Jonestown Massacre. That kind of fulfils my needs in that department.
Also there are a lot of people in Federale, we have a lot of equipment and it’s a real pain in the arse to play live!
So many people to try and coordinate...I’m not sure that it’s really feasible. It’s like taking The Polyphonic Spree on tour!
Our core group is five people but it can be nine of us.
Our focus is to be in the studio and use the studio as an instrument.
Florence: Tell me more about ‘La Rayar’.
Collin: It’s actually ‘La Rayar: A Tale Of Revenge’.
It’s the music to a movie we conceptualised. The movie doesn’t actually exist. Each character in ‘the movie’ has a theme and the various themes are exposed in the way that they would be in a movie.
They are developed and recur through various permutations as the events change and as the characters are affected by what happens in the story.
It’s the story of Santiago whose life gets destroyed and how he gets his revenge.
It’s a concept record and you can hear the different themes and how they develop.
But we’ve also written a whole other record worth of material for a second story and we’re gonna start recording that as well.
Florence: Is there a movie whose score you wish you had written?
Collin: ‘The Good, The Bad & The Ugly’, ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’ ...I guess any Spaghetti Western but I also really like ‘Clockwork Orange’ and Wendy Carlos’ music.
I think that Stanley Kubrick did a very good job of marrying images to sounds.
We’re not even necessarily tied to the Western genre as we’re starting to write for Horror movies and we might go off in that direction too.
That’s another genre we would like to explore.
Florence: Watching movies, do you kind of subconsciously rewrite the score?
Collin: Yes I do!
I try to think about how I would have done it. It’s something that I have always done but now I’ve acted upon.
Florence: What is the last record you bought and what’s playing on your i-pod these days?
Collin: Yesterday I bought Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Drinking Gasoline’ and lately I’ve been checking out Serena Maneesh .
Florence: And finally, a message to the world from Collin Hegna...
Collin: It’s important to have a positive outlook.
Realise what your dreams are and try to accomplish them.
You only have one shot!
Don’t waste any time.
Words: Florence ACHERY
www.myspace.com/federalept2
www.myspace.com/collinstore |
|
 |
|
 |
|
