There was a moment during the Dust Jacket show outside of Fate last first Friday when singer Conan Zimmerman looked up into the dusky sunset clouds and seemed to inhale them and then burst out with a hard acoustic guitar strum and plaintive wobbly vocals.
I’ve known Conan (pronounced Kunahn, semi-phonetically) socially for a few years now and have always been impressed with his taste in music and his ironic collection of indie kid skin-tight t-shirts. I’ve also been impressed with his subtle verbal gift as a conversationalist whose natural depth transcends normally belly-up small talk. So naturally I was eager to hear the band’s first EP when he kicked one down to me almost two years ago.
At the time I’d never heard Dust Jacket play live and had no barometer for his music and what the band would sound like other than CD’s he played or bands he and his friends talked about in passionate hipster name-dropping sessions. So I put the CD on late one night in my apartment and pretty much instantly didn’t like it, even though I really wanted to.
It was a problem that I usually can look past but in this case blocked my ability to listen to the well-written words and music; it was Conan’s voice. It was very high pitched, not in a Danielson family falsetto or Tom Waits in his Prince voice, at times it sounded more like a, err, little girl or a straining member of the Phoenix boys choir. I like real sounding voices. In fact I’ll take an emotional non-singer in the Lou Reed a-tonal camp over a polished American Idol style vocal treatment always. Maybe it started with Morrissey and landed permanently on Dylan, but I have forgiven many an unusual voice and learned to love it, but it wasn’t going to happen for me on that first Dust Jacket EP.
So I waited for them to get a little better and for Conan’s voice to get deeper or at least anchored in a standard male upper-register, and tried to avoid an honest critique of the EP. Conan would ask me about it and I would say something under my breath about needing more time to sit with it, but I was really just waiting until he stopped asking.
I am happy to say that Conan, just 25 but 14-looking, has reached mid-’20s peach fuzz puberty and his music and voice reflect this. The band has played a lot of shows over the last year, and I was glad to see and hear the progress. They are also almost finished with a new home-recorded EP that sounds pretty good in my headphones, though again when I first put on the songs my instinct was to resist his voice.
This can be the sign of a voice that people will ultimately listen to and grow to love, and his is really unique. It sounds a lot like early Bright Eyes, with some Destroyer and Neutral Milk Hotel thrown in for unusual vocal flavor. The songwriting is strong and fairly traditional in a rock v/c/v kind of way and the words are very well written, if not occasionally overly self-referential. For the most part you can understand what he says when sings which is always a plus, and the word are evocative and clever and the music is an emotional and contemplative base for his musings.
The straightforward earnestness of the music should get some people listening; of the 4 songs he burned for me there wasn’t a dud in the bunch. What’s kind of ironic is once I saw them live a couple of times and listened to the new material on CD, I went back and listened to the first EP, and wouldn’t you know… I liked it. In fact his mid-register vocal take on the song “Drywall Sea” from the first EP is superior to the one on the forthcoming release in my humble opinion.
Their live show last Saturday at Emerald when a scheduling mix-up (why is this epidemic in Phoenix town?) forced them to take the 1 a.m. headlining slot was very strong. They were supposed to play at 10:30 or so after a couple of like-minded acts but wound up following a good chamber pop act called English Cowboy and a wonderfully bad metal band called Life Sized Monsters that nearly cleared the place out.
After the metal band’s headset and wankeristic aural assault ended Dust Jacket got most of the people in the club out of the bar area and into the band room and somehow reclaimed the vibe from the power trio.
They played mostly up-tempo numbers at the start and Conan and Co. played well and with cross currents of energy from Conan’s acoustic and the band’s electric set-up. About half way through, it was time for a solo acoustic number and the band took a tuning break. This was a strong song and the band should have been ready to bounce the musical ball back with a full company number but they were having some other problems. It stopped the show in its tracks and could have been a show-crusher but somehow the energy stayed in the room and the next and last full band number was very strong.
I am happy that I don’t have to dodge Conan about his music when I see him now, and I bet by the time they get around to recording a full-length they will have some local label interest if not a modest indie sniffing around. With the live component finding its legs as well, I can see Dust Jacket cultivating an indie/emo following in the Valley.
JB – I have some questions about Dust Jacket. How did the band come together? Who’s in the band, etc.
CZ – After our last band fizzled out, I started teaching myself to sing and play a lot more acoustic guitar (previously l’d only played guitar). After a few months I’d put together some songs I really liked (circa late 2002) so I split the cost of a drum machine with my friend Shane Cook and he helped me program some beats that ended up on our first EP. We slowly accumulated members as songs grew more complex on the four track I had. Dann Spohn plays bass (he and I have played together in every band I’ve been in). Dann also records us (he kind of took that path as I pursued singing and songwriting – now we combine our powers for the sake of God and the American way), my brother Tristan Zimmerman plays keyboard, harmonica, and does back up vocals, and Maurizio DiFranco plays drums. Shane plays second guitar and some synth parts and does most of the electronic work for recordings
JB – Who writes?
CZ – I do 99.999 percent of the songwriting almost always bringing a fairly total piece in and then kind of directing the subsequent “fleshing-out.” That’s something I’m actively trying to change so I don’t start repeating myself. Most of the songs were written around lyrics initially.
JB – Musical backgrounds, past bands.
CZ – Binge [from] 1995-1997 – Pop punky high school band… lots of Mason Jar shows… then lots of Nile shows. Five on One [from] 1997-2001 – More mature pop punky band… played some really great shows at the Nile and Tempe Bowl. We opened for AFI at a sold out Nile show, we opened for At the Drive-In and the Murder City Devils at Tempe Bowl. Also we did sound with our band PA at Tempe Bowl about 3 nights a week for the first 6-8 months they were doing shows. The money we made let us record and release a CD. Kiss The Bottle – After lots of drummer replacement issues in Five on One and our lead singer on the verge of moving to Portland, we broke up. Then the three of us still in AZ messed around writing songs. We played a couple of shows and then turned it in.
JB – What is a gig like for you?
CZ – I love playing live but it is very chaotic and draining, especially with a five-piece when anyone can have a shitty night and pull every one down with them. As we’re getting better we’ve also been running out of practice time so the shows can be very unpredictable, which has made the good ones lately very rewarding.
JB – Recent live show highlight as well as a low or funny moment onstage or surrounding a show?
CZ – We played the worst show of our lives a couple weeks ago at the Phix. We played last after some high school screamo band that took their caravan of soccer moms with them as they left, passing us drinking Coors Light tall boys in the parking lot. We felt very sinister, but Maurizio had an astronomy lab at ASU, so we didn’t play till quite late and everything about the set-up was terrible. We played a terrible show drunk and to no one so Maurizio could look at the stars.
JB – You released one EP last year and are working on a home recording right now; will this be a full length? How was it recorded? On what equipment?
CZ – It was intended to be a full length, but we’ve whittled it down to five songs that we felt were coming out better than the rest and in the interest of time we relegated it to EP-dom. As I mentioned, Dann took up home recording about when I took on singing and songwriting, so the success and false starts of each are fairly parallel. As for how it’s been recorded… all I can say is slowly… but we keep adding ideas and we all travel a lot. Maurizio laid down drum tracks for 11 songs last summer before he went to Italy for the fall semester, as we found mistakes in his performances or Dann’s recording on the technical level, it became 5 songs. The first EP was done in Dann’s bedroom with pretty much all vocal mikes. When we moved in together, we constructed our practice place/studio and Dann has been scouring eBay and Tape Op (the home recording magazine) message boards for bigger and better stuff. We did a little four tracking on a Tascam I have for a song intro that we wanted to be really lo-fi and messed around with an Otari 1/4” reel to reel… with little success.
JB – Why at home and not in a studio?
CZ – We learned in Five on One that you have to be very prepared to enter the studio and that after dropping thousands of dollars – well two or three thousand – on studios and realizing that the engineers had no common reference points musically with us and just wanted to make us sound like a nu-metal band or use as a guinea pigs for setting up new equipment, we realized that the stuff we were doing in Dann’s bedroom was coming out clearer and much more how we pictured the songs. It is very laborious and I hope to do a full length in a good studio within the year, but only after a lot of research and hopefully with a little financial help. Also the home recording has taught us so much that will help make a real studio experience (with a good engineer that is on the same musical page as us) go smoother.
JB – What’s your goal with the new recording?
CZ – Right now we have a band that is willing play out of town, but we don’t have much to leave in people’s hands other than our EP, which doesn’t have Maurizio on it and doesn’t come close to representing us these days. Our CD that should be out in August – Our Tapestries are Thrift Store Quilts – will give us something to focus on and a reason to set up tours and play a ton of shows.
JB – Are you going to try to have it released by someone and if so, what would be your dream label?
CZ – This one will definitely be a self-release. If it ends up repressed or leads to a label, I would just want to make sure we didn’t end up being hassled into breaking up or incurring a massive debt (another benefit to self-recording is you don’t rely on that initial capital outlay). That said, if I had to pick any label based on bands I like or their general philosophy I would have to say K Records, just because they have turned out some stuff I really like in the last few years and their background is so inspirational. I like Barsuk and how small their roster is and how much push a band gets because of that smaller roster. It seems like there is too many bands lost in the shuffle of Sub Pop these days.
JB – Has Dust Jacket ever played out of AZ? Ever toured? Will you? When and where?
CZ – We haven’t been out of AZ yet, we’ve played in Flagstaff and Prescott (actually at the Chino Valley High School which was just fucking surreal and great). After the EP is out, I have designs on using all our free time to tour. I would like to do a week up through Vegas then Utah, Colorado, and Sante Fe. Then maybe a California thing like up to SF, LA, then San Diego. I hope to do lots of weekend 2 or 3 date things. After we have the CD out you have play as many shows as possible, there is no reason for it to stagnate.
JB – What music influences you and how does that come through the band?
CZ – Over the years it has been a disparate bunch, but the two things that always meant a lot to me were lyrics (Jawbreaker is huge to me) and that live recklessness that Nirvana or At the Drive-In bring… that flailing and screaming beast of a show. I don’t know if you can consciously have that but I adore it. Why would anyone listen to you if you don’t sound like you believe what you are saying so loudly? I think that is the common ground between those to aspects.
JB – Whom do you like locally and whom have you played with that you enjoyed?
CZ – I love Bodhistavva. I liked the Kyds vs. Columbus a lot. Dann just recorded a bunch songs for The Passenger, Andrew Jackson Jihad, our friend’s band from Tucson The Sweat Band, and I think Fun Fun 101 are great although I don’t know if they play live.
JB – I get a fair amount of Conor Oberst in your vocal style and also the attention to lyrics. Are you conscious of his influence?
CZ – My friend Connor Woods formerly of Kyds vs. Columbus is an amazing lyricist… but I’ve never been able to scream quite like him. No, I’m aware of that and it comes from Bright Eyes being a band I first heard around when I began learning to write songs. Actually the Mountain Goats were my biggest influence around that time for even picking up an acoustic guitar, and although the part in my hair has a similar slant to Mr. Oberst, my voice is probably as close as it is to John Darinelle’s four tracked warble. Amateur voices have always had a place in my heart (Violent Femmes, The Mountain Goats, Mirah, Nirvana, Joanna Newsom etc.) as have lyrics (Jets to Brazil, The Mountain Goats). So although I am very aware of how (especially our older stuff) Bright Eyes tinged our stuff can be, there are a myriad of influences behind my shitty voice.
JB – What is your writing process? Do you write fiction or poetry as well as lyrics, the name of your band is Dust Jacket after all.
CZ – I write constantly and will dig up a line from three years ago and turn it into a page of lyrics for a song. I think I write songs because I don’t have the attention span to write short stories. You can generally tell songs that were written lyrics first (mine usually lack chorus) and ones that started with one line and were expounded upon (more chorus oriented).
JB – What do you think Dust Jacket sound like?
CZ – Five people trying to play instruments like typewriters.
JB – What does it not sound like?
CZ – We are the furthest thing from math rock on the spectrum… and I like math rock… but our songs are really so simple musically.
JB – What are you trying to do with the band, just an outlet for expression or a way to make a living?
CZ – I would love to be able to travel and meet similarly minded people in different cities. I think one of the most valuable things about music is that instant common ground. I can’t speak for everyone else… I will always write my little songs.
JB – Tell me about This Instant and Five on One. You say you were in one of these five years ago but you are only 24. How long have you been in bands?
CZ – Actually I turned 25 in May. We started in our sophomore year of high school and just jumped right into playing shows. Five on One recorded and self-released our CD with the money from doing sound circa Tempe Bowl… so 1999-ish. This Instant was meant to be a correlating complementary project to Dust Jacket, a place for our noisier, faster songs. One reason for the Bright Eyes comparision is the concious split we made almost two years ago. We realized about 6 months ago that promoting and releasing material for two projects would be too over whelming and have slowly began adding songs from our This Instant material into our set (i.e. “Semester Abroad”) and also new songs that I’ve written that would have formerly been put in the This Instant bin are just wholly Dust Jacket songs (i.e. “Strangely,”“They were all butchers,” which will be on our EP). I have much more experience writing and playing electric guitar and I think that is one reason my acoustic songs can tend to be more derivitive. I’m really looking forward to the combination of the two. Hopefully the results can be more like Saturday at the Emerald.
