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Spindrift
The New West
The Legend
Of God's Gun
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 Californian dude Dave Koenig is a musician with an interesting and enviable curriculum vitae.
With an obvious flair for good musicians to work with and even better music, over the course of the last few years Mr Koenig has been a part of some of the creatively most relevant and best loved bands coming out of the American West coast. From The Brian Jonestown Massacre to that other cult outfit Spindrift with intermittent contribution to The Quarter After’s recordings and live shows.
Having experienced the kind of events Rock’n’Roll myths are made of, Dave happens to be a talented raconteur.
Over here as a fourth member of The Quarter After on their first tour of England, Dave Koenig does dedicate a little time to yours truly despite his heavy schedule of travelling, gigging, partying, playing the bass, partying and a little drinking of course. Well the man does need to let his hair down once in a while!
Florence: With Kirpatrick Thomas, you are a founding member of Spindrift. How did it all start ?
Dave: That’s right. Spindrift as it is on the West coast, although Spindrift did exist in Delaware on the East coast, again with Kirpatrick as the founder. He was writing all the music and was playing with his backing band for about....I think six years, but then he moved to the West coast by himself, hence the rebirth of Spindrift.
KP put a new band together which consisted of myself and a lot of the members of The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
He was selling merchandise for The BJM and when we were on tour he would play in the van the songs that he’d been working on, and everyone in the band thought that it was some of the best music they’d ever heard and we told him that: “when we get home we’d love to play with you.” That was the birth of Spindrift as we know it now.
So it was founded with me, Frankie Emerson, sometimes we would have Dan Allaire on drums, if he was available. Rob Campanella would come and join sometimes. Basically The BJM minus Anton!
We wanted to keep on playing shows without Anton because there were times when we would be off for months at a time without a BJM tour and nothing else to do so it meant that we could do Spindrift shows with KP who had been writing these genius “cow boys” songs, so fucking cool that everybody wanted to do it anyway.
Florence: Did KP give you a chance to participate to the writing ?
At times did it feel like a team effort ?
Dave: KP pretty much worked out all of his guitar parts and he is the vocalist as well so between vocals and guitar he had his idea of exactly what he wanted and we would learn the parts that would most suit his songs. Officially speaking KP comes up with the “meat and potato” of the music. It’s his mind that creates the songs and we’re kinda filling the blanks as musicians. So it is team work to a certain extend but KP is totally able to work everything out on his own. He really has a gift for music and he writes things the way that he hears them and relates that to the other members of the band. We can work with what he’s telling us and even improve upon it but it’s all KP’s ideas.
Florence: Pretty much the way Anton works, I guess.
He is the one hearing the song and does everything on his own if required.
 Dave: Pretty much the way Anton works but KP is more open to the ideas of the band members so that it does become a collective effort rather than a bunch of people learning to play parts that were written for them. That was one of the major attraction to Spindrift in the first place, KP is open minded and he likes to hear what other people have to bring to the table. He is willing to listen and show respect to other musicians.
If you have a situation where all band members will bring something with them, if those people have taste and if they’re good musicians you don’t have to coach them. It becomes a group effort and that’s always the most musically interesting to an audience rather than a person who teaches a bunch of monkeys to mimic what he came up with.
That, in my opinion, is what appeals to other musicians who want to play with a good songwriter.
People who are enthusiastic about it make Spindrift what it is.
Florence: Is it fun live as well ?
Dave: We based the band around having fun because we were so used to the rigourous schedule of The BJM where we would have really long tours.
With Spindrift we wouldn’t even rehearse. Just hit the clubs, get totally drunk, play and see what happens!
Florence: You quit Anton’s band in 2004 to be a full time Spindrifter...
Dave: I thought that everything that KP wrote was really good but because his West coast version of the band relied on The BJM players not being on tour he couldn’t do it all the time. He had to deal with the issue of finding members that wouldn’t be part of another band, that would appreciate his music, understand it and play it.
Spindrift was something that we did for fun, it wasn’t being taken seriously however what KP was doing was compelling.
When I left The BJM I had the time to join his band and then I recruited my friend Henry Evans, a great bass player and then somehow we had an actual band that was able to tour and play shows regardless of the members of The Brian Jonestown or The Warlocks. Ideally we wanted Jason Plucky Anchondo who had started as a drummer in the band but was always on tour with The Warlocks. So for a while we were doing Spindrift with a bunch of different members, then The Warlocks took a really long hiatus and Plucky was back. He is a very good drummer and a good foundation for the band, with Henry on bass, keyboard player Julie Patterson who is a really talented person. She’s actually more of a singer- songwriter and is taking a back seat playing the keys however by doing that she is putting in a lot of musical knowledge beyond what a keyboard can do! She is limited by it in a way. It’s difficult to explain.
Anyway I play guitar and the harmonica, also Marcos Diablero joined the band and between all of those members we had a real band. In the past year it really has been moving ahead.
Florence: There is a lot to be said for stability I guess.
Spindrift had become a serious project for this small group of people...
Dave: And KP is a very serious artist. I don’t understand music in a cosmic sense but I do believe that people are vessels to create music and what happens musically is that people almost become a lighting rod for a time and a place and that’s what creates a music scene.
I know that this is totally off subject....
Florence: Not at all!
Go on Dave enlighten us!
Dave: A musical scene is like a conscious collective.
You’ll have a few bands in a certain city and they all somehow create the same sound in their own way. Like the Manchester scene in England in the 90s or the San Francisco scene in the 60s which everybody knows about.
If you look at Manchester, you’ve got all these bands, all of a sudden, for no reason at all making music that everyone loves and these guys didn’t necessarily talk to one another. All of a sudden that music happened to them and it’s because of the human brain being like an antenna for a vibe happening in a certain place. I think that every musician knows this but it become bullshit if you talk about it to somebody who doesn’t get it and doesn’t understand what you are talking about, but it’s true and people feed off one another without even knowing it. One person can completely mimic another person without even realising it and that’s because they happen to be affected by the same thing . I don’t know if it’s specific to location because in the 60s it was London and The States with psychedelic music but anyway what I am getting at is that psychedelic music or other genres happen for a reason.
KP’s music in Delaware was a kind of basic attempt at psychedelic music but the guy moved to Los Angeles and gets all of us to play with him and somehow through that process came up with some of the best stuff he’s ever written. It probably was through some involvement with Silver Lake and all the bands that have come out of there since.
Florence: Tell me more about Spindrift’s sublime latest offering, ‘ The Legend Of God’s Gun’, please.
Dave: That was self released this year. I think that we pressed up 500 copies, mainly to sell on tour when we were opening for Dead Meadow.
Florence: Wasn’t that record first released in 2004 ?
Dave: Or maybe earlier. Some version of it anyway like a shitty two tracks cassette!!
Florence: It is a movie’s soundtrack. The movie, a spaghetti Western, isn’t out yet but how did it all come about ?
If I’ve got my facts right, the movie was built around the already written music....as you do!
Dave: The story with the movie is that the soundtrack was written by KP obviously, about four or five years ago, and that was some of the music he would play for us when we were on tour with The BJM. He had all the songs already worked out but what he hadn’t worked out yet was a script or some sort of story line for the movie. He just loves Westerns and he had this movie in his mind which is another testament to KP’s weird genius.
Florence: Such a good example of putting the cart before the horse!!
Dave: It’s almost like naive charm meets innocent brilliance.
He knew what he wanted but he didn’t know how to do it and it costs a lot of money to make a movie but he didn’t care.
However luckily for him and us, Mike Bruce, a musician from The Low Flying Owls listened to the soundtrack and was inspired to write a script and try to film something around it.
We couldn’t believe that anyone even cared enough to do that.
Mike, with only one camera, shot a two hours movie, using us as actors.
He really has a natural gift for photography and cinematic visuals.
We all went to the desert and shot this random footage, so thanks to Mike and his camera and despite not having any money whatsoever now we finally have a movie that matches the music!
That all happened three years ago but it’s really hard to sell to someone but it seems that Mike has finally found a company who is willing to put out the movie.
Florence: I’ve heard that it’s meant to be coming out by the end of the year.
Dave: If it does happen it will be very interesting because it was Mike’s first attempt at a feature film and it was our first attempt at writing a soundtrack so I hope that the visuals do both justice. We want the final edit to be good for everyone.
Also Mike is using other bands than Spindrift for the actual movie soundtrack.
Florence: Names please ?
Dave: The Gram Rabbit which is a great band from Joshua Tree, a really cool desert psychedelic band. Also his own band The Low Flying Owls...so it’s hopefully gonna be much more monumental than if it was just Spindrift.
Florence: I wish you all a lot of luck with that but the record alone is extremely complex which makes it really special.
Is it easy to play live?
Dave: We’ve been playing it live for years. In LA we’re known as the band that will dress up as cowboys and play spaghetti Western music!
We always have fun and people who come out to see us usually love it....we’re a party band!
Every Halloween there would be a bidding war on who would have Spindrift playing at their party.
We would take it as a great time compare to the serious darkness in playing with The BJM. Coming home from a tour we would really need a break because it was such a mentally challenging thing to be on the road with Anton and all the ups and downs he is so well known for.
Florence: I take it that you’re not worried about your relationship with Anton!
Dave: Anton knows how it is. His band is capable of some of the most amazing shows that anyone has experienced and at the same time the show can derail horrifically, in a split second, and he knows that.
I did my time and then I left the band because I thought that I could do more things with my time and my life than being the bass player with The BJM would allow me. However if you’re a musician and you want to learn about how the music business works then The Brian Jonestown is one of the best things you could ever do because that band has dealt with every scenario possible. I was there for that and Anton has taught me a lot about a lot of things, about how to do things and how not to do things and I am forever grateful for playing in that band.
I have experienced shows that are beyond my belief of greatness.
Perfect musical connection with an audience. Every member of the room is listening to you and you are connected to all of them and together you’ve created something that is so beyond the power of any person by themselves. If you ever listen to music properly sometimes it becomes this really crazy thing that everyone is really afraid to define because it doesn’t make sense from a logical standpoint. The thing that happens with the music and the audience can be so mind blowing and the only people that understand that are the people that were there or the musicians in the band but it’s all part of the same thing, the collective consciousness that I was talking about earlier. The audience is captivated by what you are playing and because they are captivated you play better. It can be so so good and Anton and his band are capable of that and that would happen plenty of time on tour. If Anton is in the right mood he will take every single one of those people and bring them into the music, more than they could have ever expected and everyone that leaves the gig goes: ”Holy shit! What just happened? That was so awesome! “. As selfish as you can be as a musician and think that you’re fucking cool, you’re nothing as good as the people who’ve come to see you play because they’re obviously interested in your art. But there is also a dark side to this because you cannot have these extreme highs without extreme lows and if you have too many extreme lows in a row your spirit cannot cope with it and you have to leave.
Maybe I am too sensitive but I couldn’t deal with it very well.
There were too many bad shows in a row and ultimately it just crushed me.
Florence: With insight do you have any regrets ?
Dave: Some people gave me shit about it saying: “Stick it out Dave because ‘Dig!’ is coming out soon blah blah blah...” but I don’t care about money or fame or any of that bullshit. I only cared about the music.
Florence: Surely no one could foresee how successful ‘Dig!’ would be, could you ?
Dave: Yeah! absolutely! If you live in LA you know what’s gonna happen when a movie comes out.
Everybody knew that ‘Dig!’ would put the band in the public light.
Florence: As well as your time with The BJM and Spindrift there is your valued collaboration with The Quarter After which I would imagine is a completely different experience.
Dave: This naturally happened. It feels like everything I have ever tried to do was like butting my head against a wall but some of the things that have happened have been some of the best things I’ve been involved with.
I met Rob Campanella randomly one night, around 1999, at The Silver Lake Lounge.
He had just started his studio and he asked me if I would play in his band with his brother Dominic. I went to his studio to check it out and he was playing some really cool psychedelic music, kinda sounding like The Byrds and I was up for it and therefore started with The Quarter After.
In the meantime Bobby Hecksher and Hunter Crawley left The BJM to become The Warlocks and were generating quite a bit of steam. That’s was about 2000. One day Anton came to a QA show kind of looking for a rhythm section. He told me that he had a show coming up at SxSW and would I want to do it. We played our warm up gig at The Silver Lake Lounge and it was sold out, everyone went crazy and I was immediately addicted.
I wasn’t a founding member, I came in late after the first round of dudes quit the band, but I came in with a serious amount of optimism because I really believed in Anton. I did put a lot of myself into it.
Florence: Getting back to The Quarter After, even though you are not officially a band member anymore you do play on their second album ‘Changes Near’, don’t you ?
Dave: Yes, ironically half way through the recording Rob called me to play some bass and somehow I found myself back into the fold, but then again I never left the band for musical reasons, I was just too busy.
For the most part I still am too busy with Spindrift to be in The Quarter After but I fucking love Rob and he’s one of my best friends in the world.
Any time he ask me I would jump and do it.
Florence: You play guitar with Spindrift but were playing the bass with The BJM and The Quarter After...
Dave: I was born and raised on the bass. I was in an orchestra as a child playing the upright bass and then I turned to the electric bass.
After you’ve played an upright bass, the electric one is just cake. I always joke that a monkey could play the bass.
With The Quarter After I did play on the first album but on this tour I am only filling in for Victor who took over when I left The QA because The BJM were touring all the time.
But life is amazing, one day I picked up a bass guitar and today I am in London! I didn’t plan this. You just have to go with the flow of what happens to you. As an artist you are frozen in time with the people who listen to your records. It doesn’t matter when it was recorded, they want to hear what they heard when they listened to your record. You’re only as current as the actual records that you have put out.
In their minds the artists have moved on but the public will want to hear their ‘hit’ song even if it’s ten years old.
Florence: Who do you recommend we listen to ?
Dave: Bruce Hack, a lot of people don’t know who that guy is but he is an electronic pioneer from the 60s. He did a lot of electronic music by himself, first for children and then put out a record called the ‘Electric Lucifer’ in 1970. It was one of the most psychedelic records ever made and this guy is like a genius and KP, with his weird sense of what’s good, talked to me about this guy.
Florence: You’ve played London with The BJM in 2004 and now with The Quarter After so how do you feel about this city ?
Dave: My take on England is this, since you’ve asked....I really like playing in England because the English culture has an attitude towards Rock’n’Roll music that is very different from the American attitude.
In the States there is an over saturation of bands but at least in England there is an appreciation for music where the audience actually pays attention and thinks about what they are watching and maybe it’s because they haven’t been bombarded with total shit yet, which makes you numb and not care at all about Rock music like we’ve got going on in the States. At least over here I feel like every time we play a show people who have come to see that show are genuinely interested in what they are seeing and they are interested in the breakdown of what makes the music. Bass players and drummers are unsung members of a band, and for the most part nobody really pays attention to the bass however over here I’ve had more than one person come up to me and talk to me about the bass!
That doesn’t happen so much in the States.
Florence: Were those people girls Dave and are you sure it’s your bass they were interested in ?
Dave: What do you mean ?
It was all kinds of people and they were genuinely interested in the breakdown of the instrument and what comprises the band. Why the music sounds the way it does. Like the kind of people who appreciate art and want to know how you painted that!
Florence: A message to the world please from Koenig.
Dave: God! That’s a really serious question Flo!
The world needs advice right now.
With all the travelling I’ve done I know that we’re all the same, with the same needs and wants and we all feel good about the same stuff.
Where you live and I live are completely different yet every man behaves the same towards women and every woman behaves the same towards men. It’s all about men and women relationships. It’s what nature has given us.
My message to the world would be that before you act like a fucking complete dipshit sit down and think about other people. Just consider others. You’ll never know everything you think you’re gonna know and someone else will always be able to tell you something that you’ve never thought of before.
Words and Pictures: Florence ACHERY
www.myspace.com/thewest
www.spindriftwest.com |
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