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The Dilettantes - Everlasting Low
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 San Francisco born and bred, Joel Gion is the man whose resume fits on a small red sticker. There it is, nonchalantly affixed to the cover of Joel’s band’s debut album... “featuring Joel Gion from The Brian Jonestown Massacre and ‘Dig!’”.
If you know your BJM from your Dandy Warhols then you’ll know that this most succinct of CVs doesn’t say much and yet says it all.
Having very quickly reached iconic status for being the unofficial spokesperson for hedonism, today, self confessed fun addict Joel is a man who has being able to shed his old skin and reappear a more poised individual, able to laugh at his new-found ranking and yet take it all in his stride.
Spearheading The Dilettantes, [ that’s also guitarists Jefferson Parker and Brock Galland, bass player Nick Marcantonio and drummer KC Kozak], Mr Gion proves to all the documentary watchers among us that he is so much more than the guy standing centre stage with The Brian Jonestown, brandishing maracas or tambourines, entertaining the crowds while his cohorts retune their guitars.
With this superb debut album, ‘101 Tambourines’, Joel manages to delight, surprise, enchant and establish himself as a song writing force to be reckoned with, in one clean sweep.
Having followed The Dilettantes’ progress for a while, I have on many occasions requested an interview with my favourite percussionist. Always very gently and politely turned down I refused to give up.
Tonight Gion is in Oxford with The BJM and has finally realised that resistance is futile. He cannot withstand my advances any longer, my charm too powerful...or does he have something to promote? Hmm....
 Florence: I’ve just had the pleasure of listening to The Dilettantes’ debut album ‘101 Tambourines’.
It has already been called a masterpiece which I agree with but how long has it been in the making?
Joel: I started writing songs about two years ago and then we recorded it last year.
It took about three weeks to track and then we mixed and mastered it.
It was a pretty quick process.
We’ve been playing the songs for about a year and a half so we kind of knew what we wanted to do with them
Florence: Are you the main songwriter?
Joel: I am yes!
Florence: Wow! I never realised that you were so talented!
Joel: A lot of people didn’t!
Eight of the songs are mine. I write the chords and the lyrics and then I show them to the guys so one of them will write a bridge for me...but I give dual song writing credit because without the guys the songs wouldn’t be as good as they are.
Even though I write the words and the chords, when we get in the studio that’s when we make it happen and it becomes more of a band ‘thing’.
Florence: I would imagine that those songs have been playing in your head for a while but now that they are finally on record for you to listen to over and over again how do you feel about them?
Is it as good as you were hoping it would be?
Joel: It’s even better than I hoped. You go into the studio and you want things to sound a certain way. We would do that plus take things even further especially with the guitar sounds.
I think that we have a lot of very interesting guitar tones on the record, just like I had in my head.
I’m in my bedroom with an acoustic guitar writing chords and I’m writing bars for a rock rev up thinking :” I want it to sound like this “ which is nothing like the sound coming out of your acoustic guitar.
What was in my head is on the cd, and more....it was the greatest thing to unwrap the vinyl and put it on. It’s just great to hear the songs on the vinyl grooves. It’s my first one you know!
Florence: The record is a very interesting journey, mainly due to the different vocals. You have a very distinctive voice but who are the other two singers?
Joel: One is Jefferson Parker who has written three songs on the album, one of which I sing and the other two he sings himself, “Don’t You Ever Fall” and “Never Go Without”.
Brock Galland, our other guitar player, is also a song writer and he sings on “Kiss & Run” and also on “You’re Gonna Need More Time”.
So really we have three songwriters and three singers.
Florence: This is working out beautifully but do you feel less pressure that way?
Joel: Absolutely. It’s nice to have three songwriters in the band so I don’t have to take all the responsibilities. Their writing is great and it adds dynamic and diversity.
Florence: Where did your inspirations come from and how personal are the texts, if at all?
 Joel: I draw a lot from past experiences and past situations I have been in. The song writing process for me is pretty basic because I know just about enough guitar to write songs but that’s about it!
Because of that I don’t know how to listen to other music and go:
“ I want to write a song that sounds like that. “
It’s beyond my realm of capabilities to do so, so they’re really simple songs which I kind of like plus if you look at things like The Jesus and Mary Chain’s first record or The Ramones’, it’s very basic three chords but it’s all in the sound that they do. The Jesus and Mary Chain couldn’t play either when they first came out and yet ‘Psychocandy’ is like one of the top five records of all time so I kind of never really want to learn how to play.
Florence: Do you want to retain this kind of child like innocence?
Joel: Yes, to keep it very basic and not get too distracted by other people’s music.
Florence: You have managed to achieve a very distinctive sound.
Joel: Jefferson, who is like a professor, a 60s aficionado from the old San Francisco scene, will look at the songs and will come up with parts and we kind of take it from there, but he is so knowledgeable about music that he doesn’t need to look at other bands.
Psychedelic music is traditional music that you can akin with Blues music or Indie, Irish Folk...it’s a traditional type of music that was started in the 60s that is able to be passed down and you can interpret it in your own way and apply it to the modern world, hopefully.
Florence: Mentioning other people’s music, you are better known for being a member of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, with whom you have been involved for many years.
How much influence did you allow yourself from that part of your life?
Joel: The main inspiration was having such an amazing song writer as Anton and working with him so closely for so many years and having him try and push me into writing music for so long .
I was inspired to prove to him that I could do it.
Florence: Do you look at him as some sort of mentor?
Joel: Maybe in some ways but it’s definitely inspirational to watch him create music and make the things that he’s made.
He was always on me about writing something.
Florence: Could Anton see the potential in you that maybe you couldn’t see yourself?
Joel: It was more of a challenge I think...for me to carry my own weight in a way. It was put to me in a fashion that was almost like having your father tell you: “Go mow the lawn.” and because it’s coming from an authority figure you rebel against it, you don’t want to do it.
It wasn’t until I was out of the band, from which I took a couple of years off, that I really started to want to write my own music and get my own thing together because I didn’t have a career anymore, I wasn’t doing anything musically. I couldn’t join another band and play the tambourine because I would only do that for Anton’s band and I wasn’t gonna write songs and have someone else sing them so I just had to get off my butt...
It wasn’t my initial inclination to be a lead singer but I thought that I had to fill in that role.
Florence: You seem very comfortable assuming the role of band leader.
With The Brian Jonestown you are “up front”, even though you are not the “main man”, I guess because you are a very charismatic personage with real showmanship.
I feel that with The Dilettantes you are in your natural environment, centre stage, singing your own songs....
Joel: It’s interesting because to have me at the front just playing the tambourine was a concept I was always really into because it was defying the rules bands play. The singer is upfront, the guitar player is next to him and the bassist is in the corner next to the drummer and that’s the way it is with every band so we wanted to make a statement that you don’t have to follow those rules, you can do whatever you want, it’s performance art in a way.
So now with The Dilettantes to be the singer and put in a more classic position is almost not as interesting.
Florence: The Dilettantes’ album is called ‘101 Tambourines’ which is so appropriate as you are, to me, the Jimi Hendrix of tambourine players. You have brought that often underestimated instrument back to life and made shaking a tambourine a totally cool and worthwhile activity, but why the tambourine?
Joel: Actually it didn’t start with a tambourine.
In San Francisco in 1994 one of my room mates was, at the time, Anton’s girlfriend. It was her birthday and the band was going to play in the cellar of the building. I’d done some running around with the guys from The Brian Jonestown and Anton said to me the day of the show:
“ You live here so you should come and join the band, play maracas or something.” so I got some maracas.
I was watching on TV a rerun of the ‘Monterey Pop Festival’, the bit where Jimi Hendrix sets his guitar on fire and I’m about to play my first gig with a band... so we do the show and at one point the power went out, all the guitars cut out and we only have the drums playing in the pitch blackness and because I had just watched Jimi, I had my little plan and some lighter fluid with me so I lit my maracas on fire. All you could see were the flaming maracas going and the sound of the drums and then the power kicked back on and everybody went right back into the songs where it should be at that point.
Florence: You see Gion you can’t fool me, I knew that there was some Hendrix connection somewhere.
Joel: Someone was filming the show and Anton watched the video the next day, called me and asked me to come over to their next show.
I kept showing up to their next shows but he’s never actually asked me to join the band. I guess that I am not officially a member!
Florence: Are you telling me that for the last thirteen years you have been shamelessly gate crashing these guys’ shows?
Are the guys too polite to tell you where to go?
Joel: Yes and yes!
Florence: Going back to you drawing from your past experiences to fuel your writing, is it fair to say that, apart from stalking The BJM, you’ve had an eventful and interesting life?
Wild at times?
Joel: I’ve mellowed a bit you can say, but from 19 to 28...well that was definitely my wild years. Living in warehouses where LSD was being manufactured. I was paying my rent by painting pages of the stuff and I was also running around with Anton.
Florence: Despite all that I guess that it wasn’t such a bad life. Your record is a happy one, very uplifting.
Are you a very positive person?
Joel: Very much so. Left to my own device I can be very optimistic.
You get into situations where other people are in control and what are you gonna do?
But when I am in my natural element and it’s up to me then I always look for the fun side of things and that does come across in the songs.
I don’t have any songs where my life is just crap because it’s not something to focus on.
The negative is what is handed to you from life, for free!
The positive, you have to work for!
Florence: Wow! I never realised that you were such a philosopher!
Joel: A lot of people didn’t!
Florence: Due to your time with The Brian Jonestown Massacre being well documented, in Europe at least, you have become an icon.
Having spent a lot of time with the band I know you as someone who is extremely polite and respectful, at times shy and quiet and especially very interesting to talk to, whatever the subject.
Those sides of your personality don’t shine through in ‘Dig!’ so it feels like people have fallen in love with another Joel, how do you feel about that?
Joel: It’s a direct fault to the documentary.
When you walk into a theatre to watch a documentary you leave your disbelief at the door because you think: “ I am going to watch something about real people so it’s real. It’s a documentary. ”
But we need to take into account that the film makers need to make an interesting film, so they will manipulate angles of people’s personalities, accentuate some sides and leave out others. Anton is not a jerk all the time, sometimes he’s really funny, he’s also very sensitive, sometimes I’m very quiet and sometimes I’m loud. ‘Dig!’ had a montage of me being crazy. The filming starts out in 1996, which is eleven years ago, and I was just a kid out of my mind on methamphetamine and Gin and tonic 24H a day...
Florence: You looked good on it!
Joel: I felt real good!
People see that first half an hour of the movie and they go: “Oh! That’s that guy...” but it’s not showing any of the other stuff. But that was a long time ago and you can only live that kind of lifestyle for so long before it really starts to kick you in the ass, so I made a decision to only do that once in a while rather than all the time.
But also about that image in the film, I think that it portrays a very “devil may care, do what you feel” kind of attitude which was very much what I did 24/7. I didn’t work, I didn’t have responsibilities, there was nothing I had to take care of, I just looked for the next party and have fun...I don’t do that so much now but people see that footage from then and put it together as some sort of a philosophy on life. Let’s just go out and have fun and it doesn’t matter if you’re just playing a tambourine. Actually everyone should be able to do that, everyone should be able to play.
I think that people identify with that and I am proud of myself for conveying that notion.
If I’m seen as an icon...well it’s all part of the game baby!
Florence: As a child what was your first introduction to music?
Joel: I got turned on to The Beatles very early on and it started from there. I saw “Yellow Submarine” when I was six and that was it!
They are still my favourite band. We go to Liverpool and I dork out and go to the museum, go to the stores and buy junk. Right now my bag is full of Beatles junk, magnets, T-shirts....
Florence: Making McCartney even richer!
Well done Joel!!
Joel: I wish it was John but what can you do!
Florence: What are you listening to right now?
Joel: Kelley Stoltz is probably my favourite songwriter right now and he is from San Francisco. Mojo magazine called him “the thrift store John Lennon” which is a fitting title. He’s just a great songwriter and a great singer.
Florence: How do you find the San Fran. music scene these days?
Joel: There are very few live venues to play because more and more people complain about loud music and they get the clubs shut down.
San Francisco is the birth place of psychedelic music and bohemia, yet there is not a lot going on in that respect, which is a shame.
In the early 90s there was a huge scene. When The Brian Jonestown first started out you could go to a show every week, anywhere, and there would be three bands playing, all 60s or Brit Pop related.
Week after week after week...and we all knew each other and we had our own scene. We had the parties, the people, the vibes...but it’s all gone.
Florence: As it’s getting harder and harder for the bands to play live in San Fran. do you find that the fan base is also diminishing?
Joel: People just don’t go out as much as they used to and that’s kind of a problem. It’s not as social a place anymore.
Florence: You have played Europe countless times with The BJM and I would imagine that your dream is to bring The Dilettantes over here...
Joel: We love England and France. I’d rather come here than play America. America has got a couple of good cities and then it’s just crap!
With fucking George Bush as a president...why would I want to tour that place?
Florence: A message to the world perhaps?
Joel: Fight the man and never trust anybody over thirty, except for me and you!
Words: Florence ACHERY
www.myspace.com/thedilettantes |
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