The Mendoza Line

In November, New York's Mendoza Line released their seventh album, Full of Light & Full of Fire, to critical acclaim.  On a lunch break in Japan, CMG's Kate Steele pulled Mendoza's songwriting team, Timothy Bracy and Shannon McArdle, away from an episode of Law and Order to talk about Bob Dylan, the evolution of the new album, and the clarity of the phone connection.

Pt. 1
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CMG's Kate Steele (CMG): Where are you from?
Mendoza Line's Timothy Bracy (TB): McLean, VA, a suburb of Washington D.C. Home of the CIA amongst other delights.

CMG: I thought you guys were actually from Georgia, so it’s interesting to me that you’re not at all.
TB: That’s where we met but I certainly don’t think of myself as being from the south. My mother would faint. She’s always had this little phobia about the south.

CMG: So you just decided to go to university in Athens?
TB: Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I think I thought maybe I might be able to start a band. That was basically the extent of my college search.

CMG: And that’s what you did, obviously.
TB: Uh-huh.

CMG: So how did you guys get together initially, the band?
TB: A couple of my high school friends and I had this idea in mind that we wanted to play music together from, god knows, a very young age. So we all just sort of convened in Athens, god, ten years ago now, with the idea that we’d just go ahead and do that. That was Pete and Paul-- both very close friends of mine and variously involved with the band. And then Shannon and I met a few years later at a bar and it seemed like, I don’t know, that she knew so much about music, and I was just very excited about the idea. She could sing and write, and I was very excited about that.

CMG: I want to ask you about a couple of the songs on Full of Light & Full of Fire. “Catch a Collapsing Star” in particular -- do you feel comfortable talking about what it’s about?
TB: I don’t know. I guess it’s about, I mean, there are some specific things that wouldn’t make much sense to explicate, but I think in a more general way I think I was trying to talk about understanding, as you get older, the ways in which you have slighted people or transgressed against them and wishing that you could make that better, but accepting that, you know, things have a certain inevitability about them, and relationships sometimes have a certain inevitability about them, and you can sort of look at them wistfully and take something happy away from it, but it’s also sort of a melancholy sense of, you know, shit I should never have done that, or I should never have said that. I’d like that back, but I can’t get that back. Those were the sorts of emotions that I was trying to convey. I don’t know how much that comes across.

CMG: Yeah, I think it does. This is what I had written down before: “I think it rides the line of guilt and contempt and hurt in the same way that the best Dylan songs do.”
TB: Yeah, there are some Dylan songs that, say “Mississippi” from “Love and Theft.” Ah, look, you know, I’m not going to start comparing myself to Bob Dylan. That’s way beyond anything I could ever hope to accomplish…

CMG: Well, you sound a lot like him. That’s true…
TB: Yeah well, I certainly never dispute the influence. But “Mississippi” is that kind of a song, where he’s sort of commingling those feelings of regret and, you know, I don’t know what he means when he says “I stayed in Mississippi a day too long” but you can extrapolate, and you can tell that, that was a decision that he’s going to have to make his peace with. I guess it’s that kind of a song.

CMG: I talked to Shannon about how she’s gotten to the place she’s at now with music. You said you always wanted to have a band. Was that all you’ve ever wanted to do or did you have a plan B?
TB: Yeah, from a very early age it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to work for NASA. You know, I wasn’t going to be curing any major illnesses. There are only a very few choices for somebody with my particular skill set. This is basically it for me.

CMG: The song “Name Names” seems to me to be about the increasing fear-mongering that’s going on in the U.S. and compares the restrictions enforced through the Patriot Act to McCarthyism. Is that an accurate reading?
TB: Yeah, and there’s sort of a third level that I don’t think anybody would have any reason to pick up on, but basically it’s about this guy that’s sort of under the gun to start a family, to name a child, etc, and he is just full of dread. He's pondering whether he can handle it and maybe how to get out of it, and his wife is thinking "Jesus, don't bother..."

This just seemed funny to me. There’s a Lou Reed song called "Turn To Me" which I find great, wherein he’s addressing a friend with this sort of litany of misfortunes and saying that he can always count on him regardless ("when you're father is freebasing / and your mother's turning tricks / and your wife says maybe it's time to have a child / turn to me..."). I just love that. Anyway, in the second verse of "Name Names", the more serious connotation of this phrase is sort of examined. The government is now extending these tentacles, listening to conversations, reading e-mail, invading privacy, etc. So there is some sort of metaphorical notion of loss of freedom, but on completely separate levels, of course. Another inspiration would be Costello's "Armed Forces" where the personal and political are so intrinsic that they can't even be separated. The narrator of those songs seems not to know if he’s being oppressed by his government, his lovers, or both. Obviously I am not conflating "Name Names" to Costello or Lou Reed terrain, but these are generally the sorts of things I had in mind.

CMG: What risks, if any, do you feel you take involving politics in your music at this time in America?
TB: It would be difficult to characterize it as much of a risk, being a relatively unknown band. Shannon and I talked a lot about what sort of vernacular we could come up with to say something topical but get away from the pitfalls of what is a caricature of protest writing/preaching/
sloganeering/etc. In the end that kind of writing is just not very much fun and is easily dismissed. We wanted to write about people who don’t have many songs written about them. This idea that rock n’ roll is this very glamourous world and about pretty people who sing sad songs about their college girlfriends, etc. -- that’s not what we had in mind. What would a person in a nursing home who was trying to pull together the details of his life, a little deluded, be thinking about? We wanted to write about people on the margins, people in predicaments. It’s not an original idea -- the Mekons, American Music Club have done it. But there’s something inherently political about trying to speak for people who don’t have a voice. That was enough of a challenge for us. As far as being interpreted as political or strident or whatever, I’m not sure. That doesn’t concern me.

CMG: That’s what I admire about this album -- that you’re actually commenting about the current political climate in the U.S. and stretching yourselves to explore experiences outside your own. I haven’t been very acquainted with indie music, and in general have kind of shied away from it (which is why it’s really funny that I’m now writing for CMG…) I’m starting to be more open-minded about it, but it always struck me that the whole indie thing was more about the length of your pants or how your hair was cut or what you had to say about Jean Paul Sartre than about whether music was any good.
TB: Ha. In Athens in my early to mid-twenties there were things going on there -- Neutral Milk Hotel and all that. It was hard not to be caught up in it, and we aspired in some way to be part of it, and I guess we were in a way. But that’s what was so attractive to me about Shannon. She couldn’t name any indie bands, etc, and I’d be like “Really? You’ve never so much as heard of Belle and Sebastian?” She has this incredible knowledge of music, but nothing after about 1985. She kind of oriented me. I’ve probably brought her around to some more contemporary stuff too, I guess. She brought to light the silliness of, I don’t know, attempting to hit any sort of contemporary sense of, say, post-rock in Chicago. We don’t go out.

Recently, this Canadian band we were touring with, Picastro, came to stay with us. I had to go out and pick them up after their show and it was very eye-opening. I saw this sea of people who are not our audience (I’m not sure who is our audience). They were all very young and attractive with these great hair cuts, and in the bar they were talking in the most sober tones about the most obscure rock music. I came home and said to Shannon, “We may as well be the Glenn Miller Orchestra to them.” There’s no relation between us and what’s going on at, say, Pitchfork, although I appreciate what they’re trying to do.

CMG: I guess the thing I’m realizing is that, trappings of any sort of scene aside, there is a lot of excellent “indie” music that I’ve been missing out on.
TB: Yeah, that’s the flipside, I suppose. We toured recently with Okkervil River. They’re just the greatest people, and are a really fantastic band. Scene/aesthetic aside, there’s an enormous amount that’s good and worth investigating.

CMG: To end with a few stock questions, who are your main influences?
TB: You know, there are so many, but probably not too many surprises. Costello, The Stones, The Velvets, The Clash, The Replacements, Richard Thompson. I think Dylan looms so enormously over the folk/rock tradition that it is almost redundant to mention him, but of course we're very very familiar with all of his catalogue.

CMG: What are you listening to lately?
TB: Destroyer and Okkervil River. My two favorite contemporary songwriters I think are Dan Bejar and Will Sheff. As I’ve stated, I'm not too familiar with new music- I should do a much better job- but both of these guys constantly impress me. Also the amazing new Minus 5 album, featuring a big songwriting and personal hero of ours, Scott McCaughey, who is in the pantheon of all time great artists as far as I'm concerned. He is one of the biggest stars in my musical galaxy.

CMG: Well, thanks for talking to me Tim. Good luck.
TB: It was our pleasure, really. Thanks for all of your interest. Good luck to you, too.


Pt. 2

CMG's Kate Steele (CMG): Where did you grow up?
Mendoza Line's Shannon McArdle (SM): I was born in New York, on Long Island. My father’s from Ireland. He moved to New York a few years before we were born. I have a twin brother and an older sister. My mom’s from New York. When we were pretty young my father got offered a job in Albany, Georgia, a small town near Florida. So we moved there, which was quite an experience. But it was basically where I grew up.

CMG: So what’s Albany like?
SM: Oh.. well, there’s a lot of poverty, but then there’s also a lot of rich people, too -- like New York, I guess. The population is less than a hundred thousand. It’s just, so, I don’t know, have you ever been to the south?
CMG: No, I’ve never been. I’ve always kind of wanted to go to Georgia -- it’s always kind of intrigued me.
SM: It really is a fascinating place, and I’m really glad I had the opportunity to live there -- it was kind of an eye-opening experience. I went to a Catholic elementary school so I was around a lot of Northerners because there’s a military base in Albany and a lot of the students were from, like, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Then I went to a public high school, and it was, I guess it was about 60% black and it was really a great experience for me, but there’s still a lot of racism in the south. There were a lot of fights at my high school -- I mean not that I was in -- but it was an interesting experience to have.

CMG: Then you went to university in Athens, is that right?
SM: Yeah, I went to the University of Georgia. I graduated when I was twenty-two and moved to New York. So I’ve been here now for seven years.

CMG: How did you first hook up with Mendoza Line?
SM: Well, it was in Athens, and I was just about to move to New York. Maybe April or May. I was in a bar, and a friend of mine introduced me to Tim and Paul, our bass player. We just kind of hit it off. They were just finishing up an album at that time, I Like You When You’re Not Around, and Tim just said to me “Hey, why don’t you come sing?” and I thought, “Okay, if you want me to.” I’d never done any recording or written any songs, or anything, but I sang on one of the songs on the album. Tim actually left for New York before me with his then girlfriend and he gave me one of his old guitars and said “Hey, do something with this.” My twin brother’s a great guitar player and I practiced, you know, five chords and just started writing. I didn’t have anyone to discourage me. I think most people think they have to be good at guitar first and then they can tackle writing, but I did both of them at the same time so I didn’t feel inhibited at all. I think the second song I wrote was on We’re All In This Alone. So I just sort of dove in there.

CMG: You didn’t play guitar before, but did you sing or play any other instruments?
SM: Well, you know, as a kid I loved singing. I’ve always loved singing, but I’ve never had any training or anything. I’ve always been a real music lover. My brother and I have always been into music and shared a real passion. We’ve always loved Dylan and Costello and people like that, but I’d never really sung. Just to myself.

CMG: Do you feel like it was luck that brought you guys together? Do you think you might have pursued trying to get into a band, or did it just sort of happen?
SM: No, I never would have even thought about it. It wasn’t a desire of mine. There was never a day when Tim said “Hey, why don’t you be in the band?” It just kind of happened. So I think for a long time I questioned, you know, how serious am I about this? Am I just doing it because it just seems kind of easy to do right now? But the longer I did it, the more committed I became to it and the more I realized that it really was what I wanted to do. I didn’t have this strong feeling when I first started writing or singing with them, though, that, “Wow, this is something I have to do. This is my calling.” I feel that way now, but it took a few years.

CMG: What part of the process do you like the best: writing, recording, performing?
SM: I love recording. I think that would be my favourite part. I get such a kick out of just playing around with arrangements. Often Tim and I write separately, and we’ll come together with the band and showcase the song for the first time- sometimes the first time for each other. I love playing with vocals, harmonies, and trying weird things. You know, sometimes, whoever’s recording us might be like, “Um, that’s not working.” And I’ll be like “Hey. Just wait! I’m onto something!”

CMG: So you feel quite experimental in the studio, quite comfortable?
SM: Yeah. But I love performing too. There are times when it’s so taxing. Going on tour is always stressful in a way, and I’m not the world’s best traveler. You know, I love to travel, but I don’t necessarily love to sleep on people’s floors.

CMG: How do you guys usually tour? Do you have a van?
SM: We did have a van. It’s dead now. We actually have a tour coming up in the states. We don’t exactly know how we’re going to get around. I think we’ll have to end up renting on this one. After that we don’t have anything in the U.S. for awhile. We’re heading to the U.K. and then Australia in the spring.

CMG: So will you be touring with The Great Lake Swimmers again?
SM: Yeah, we will be in March. I don’t know how many dates we have with them. At least ten. And we were just in Canada. We’re toured with them there.

CMG: Is this your first tour to Australia?
SM: First time!

CMG: Are you excited?
SM: Yeah, I can’t wait.

CMG: So you guys moved to New York seven years ago. Was that a smooth transition for you, moving back?
SM: Oh no, I was very miserable for the first, I’d say, four years that I was here. I think I thought about leaving at least once a week. Not really leaving because I didn’t like New York, but thinking well, if I don’t love New York, why am I here? It’s so expensive. But now, I can’t imagine leaving.

CMG: Do you think as a musician in the U.S. that New York is the only place to be? Is that why you moved back?
SM: Honestly, I don’t think it matters that much where you live once you get your foot in the door. You can record anywhere. It’s so easy to find studios with really great equipment, or to even do it from home. And touring- it doesn’t matter where you start out from. I think it’s helpful in the beginning to make connections here, but I think we could be living anywhere at this point.

CMG: In terms of the venues you can play in New York, though, it must be kind of amazing to have so many options.
SM: I guess that’s the thing about living in New York -- you make friends with people who own clubs and then you always feel welcome in a place. Also, you have the opportunity to play the kind of big shows you wouldn’t otherwise.

CMG: Let’s talk about Full of Light & Full of Fire. How do you feel about the way it’s being received?
SM: I’m thrilled. It’s being received exactly how I hoped it would be. I couldn’t be happier with reviews and the amount of coverage we’ve been getting. It doesn’t necessarily translate into money, but I couldn’t be happier about it at the moment.

CMG: I wanted to ask you about the political aspect of the album. People seem to be focusing on that, and I think it’s part of what makes it really good. Do you think it’s important in general for music to be political, or is it just something you’re thinking about at the moment?
SM: The longer I’m writing and the older I get I feel a real responsibility as a female songwriter -- whether people are listening or not, whether anyone knows my name. As someone who gets to record music, who gets to get her songs out there, I feel a real responsibility to write things of substance and things that are important to me. I decided on this album that I wanted to write about women, basically. So “Golden Boy” is about the torture of women-- really all over the world. People write about the song and say it’s about the torture of women in Saudi Arabia, or some place in the middle east, but it’s really also about the abuse of women here in the states. We think American women are so educated, and so independent that it doesn’t go on here but of course it does, and there are a lot of women in terrible situations here too. And a song like “Water Surrounds” is from the point of view of a desperate woman, someone suffering from post-partum depression. I just tried to think, “What might that be like?” because it’s something that I can’t relate to, just like I can’t relate to abuse and torture, but I can try to sort of imagine what that might be like. So it was a real challenge, but I didn’t want to write about the same old things. I wanted to write about things that are important now, and obviously the situation in Iraq, and the situation with women is huge and it needs to be talked about even though I think everyone, you know, they hear a song and they think “Ah, Jesus, do we have to hear about Bush again? Of course, everyone hates Bush. Why does someone have to write about it?” But nobody really does write about it. It’s so obvious, though of course everyone talks to their friends about how much they hate Bush. But people, at least in songwriting... I just don’t hear a lot about it.

CMG: I don’t really understand it, either. It’s something I think about a lot. I don’t know if it’s just a matter of people wanting to escape and to not think about anything---?
SM: Yeah, and feel good. I like to feel good, too! It’s just, especially living in a place like New York, every day you have a conversation with someone on the street or at work or with your husband or your neighbour about Bush and what’s going on in politics. The idea that people aren’t really discussing that or addressing that in their art just seems a little strange.

CMG: I read a recent article about you guys in Aversion.com. I thought it was well-written, and engaging, etc, but I found the way it was framed kind of interesting. The author seemed to stress that Full of Light is a political album, but had this kind of disclaimer saying “It’s political and left-leaning, but don’t worry. It’s still okay. It’s still good.” Also, when the article discussed how you were writing from women’s perspectives it had the same tone of “She’s writing from women’s points of view, but don’t worry. She’s not that scary type of feminist. She’s at a comfortable middle-ground.” I feel like we’re at this point of hyper-polarity in all regards. Everything’s so dumbed down and seems to need to be presented in terms of black and white. Do you think there’s more of a stigma surrounding art that’s even remotely political at this point in time?
SM: Well, yeah. I don’t know if it’s so much of a stigma. People just seem to stay away from writing about it because maybe they think they need to be really well-read, or really educated in what’s going on in the world in order to have an opinion. I think people worried about, you know, “What if someone challenges me? What if my facts aren’t right?” And I think for listeners or readers, their first reaction is “This is going to be boring or preachy, so I don’t want to read or listen to it.”

CMG: I guess it just kind of offends me the way things seem to need to be framed so much in terms of extremes. Like, from the introduction of an album a statement like “This is a political album” needs to be made, and then followed by some disclaimer about how, even though it’s political, people don’t need to be afraid of it.
SM: Yeah, that bothers me immensely too. What bothers me probably even more is the “Well, this is a feminist song, but not in that butch way.” But I understand it, because when I was in my teens, or even as a child, the word feminist seemed so awful to me. I think it’s because my sister’s a bit older than me and she always used to call herself a feminist when we were teenagers. She basically hated boys at that time, and I equated in with this man-hating. I thought it meant you couldn’t be proud of the way you looked, you couldn’t want to be feminine, you couldn’t want to be engaging or mysterious with men. You had to be extremely intelligent and plain looking and hate men. And I realized eventually that, of course, that’s not what feminism is. The definition changes from generation to generation, too. So now the word feminist is a word I love and would be proud to called. It took me a long time to get to this point, though, so I understand why some people are turned off by it.

CMG: Regarding people’s interpretation, or misinterpretation, of the word feminist. It strikes me that a lot of women in the U.S. don’t seem aware that legislation seriously restricting their reproductive rights could be passed any day. Why do you think more women don’t seem to be aware that the stakes are so high?
SM: Hmm. That’s a good question. I’m not sure I can answer that question. I don’t know. It is true that women don’t seem to really be aware that their right to have an abortion could be taken away from them basically any day. It’s not something that’s really talked about openly in the media, so I think a lot of women might just not know what’s going on. But then I think another reason could be that it’s just such a hard thing to talk about, in terms of a person’s experience and background. It’s not something people want to talk about, or even think about, so maybe there’s just not enough discussion happening. Wow. I can see now why you asked me if I wanted you to send the questions beforehand! That’s a tough question.

CMG: Well, to take things in an entirely different direction, who would you say are your main musical influences?
SM: I'd have to say Costello and Dylan. I know it's boring, but......

CMG: What are you listening to these days?
SM: A lot of Richard and Linda Thompson. Shoot Out the Lights is my favourite if I'm feeling blue. Also Destroyer. Hmmm. That's what I've been running to lately.

CMG: When are you guys heading out on tour?
SM: We start out at Cornell, go out west to SxSW in Austin, and end up in Chicago. We'll be gone from the 10-27th I believe.

CMG: When to Australia?
SM: Australia is scheduled for June.

CMG: Thanks so much for talking to me. Good luck on your tours!
SM: Thanks for calling from Japan! Good luck to you, too.