Exclusive Interview (1)

Exclusive Interview (2)

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music interviewed Shahzad Ismaily of Two Foot Yard on August 12, 2004 New York (NY), The Tonic.

Xtreme Music: I’m here with Shahzad Ismaily outside The Tonic in New York City. I’d like to start the interview by asking about the Two Foot Yard performance that you played in this evening. How exactly did you meet Carla Kihlstedt and how has her work influenced you?

Shahzad Ismaily: Carla I met her because a while ago my mother was going to a psychiatric conference in San Francisco, California. I often accompany my mom on these different occassions just to hang out with her and see what’s what. So on this particular occasion she invited me to come with her, and I went to San Francisco which is where Carla and the rest of this crew are based. I went out to see something called The San Francisco Stretch Festival which was advertized in the paper as some sort of conglomerization of just weird musicians, and that’s what I’m into mostly. So I went to see the performance and Mark Growden was playing, who’s an exceptionally talented songwriter, accordianist, that sort of thing. Nils Frykdahl, the lead singer from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, was playing with them. So I ended up by way of going on tour with Mark, meeting Nils and Dawn, who is his girlfriend and an incredible musician from Faun Fables. Then the next time Nils was in town, he invited me to see a show called Charming Hostess. Carla was playing violin and singing in that band. Immediately after I saw her perform I was really enthralled. So is my want sometimes, I was a little bit forward and went up to her and said “I’d like to play with you sometime, can I get your number?”. So you-know musicians on the road are usually taken aback by that sort of thing because it happens too frequently and you never quite know what’s going on with the person taking to you. In any case, for some reason she was kind of ok with it, she gave me her number. I called her the next day and pestered her to come down to an open electronic music jam that I was doing with this drummer JoJo Mayer. She came and we talked for a while and that’s ultimately how I met her, through that crowd Charming Hostess, Nils Frykdahl and Idiot Flesh. Now the way she has influenced me the most, I’d have to say is that she has severe classical training, like very intense. She was probably on that virtuoso path to being an exceptionally talented symphony violinist. She derailed it almost immediately because she wanted a deeper experience with music. Now that’s not to say, of course there are classical musicians that interprete pedagogy, and they interprete the canon of classical music quite deeply. But I think the generalization you can make is that unfortunately it’s a field that tends to produce technocrates as apposed to musicians. She was challenging herself to stay outside of that, and that in turn pulled me towards her because that’s also what I want out of music. I want it to be a very deep experiential thing that’s not based on form necessarily, or tuning, or notes, or rhythms, or anything, but something more abstract than that.

Xtreme Music: Who would you say have inspired you the most lyrically and musically?

Shahzad Ismaily: I’m playing with a songwriter Garret Devoe who’s lyrics constantly blow my mind! His influences are old luddite style influences, William Blake, Burt Jonche, Leonard Cohen, obviously Nick Drake, that sort of thing. He’s a very, very deep writer and so having played a lot with him, I’ve gone back now and done some backwards research and listened to a lot of those musicians, and have extremely appreciated their lyrics. Then also I tend to like lyricists that write very simply, leaving the audience member or the listener to interprete their own experience within a very simple phrase. Bands like Low or Björk often have these very mono-phrase, repetitive things that then become grander and grander as you listen to them.

Xtreme Music: You’ve also collaborated with Trey Spruance in Secret Chiefs 3, could you tell us a little bit about your work on “Book Of Horizons”?

Shahzad Ismaily: That was ridiculously hard music to learn and to play. I mean Trey is an outstanding composer who is meticulous about every detail that happens in a track. Sometimes you play with people and you’re kind of excited about their looseness. For example, if I listen to a Cat Power record I’m excited by the fact that the drummer never seems to be caralled into playing “properly”. He’s allowed freedom to just be incredible loose and Trey is on the flipside of that, but equally beautiful. In the sense that every detail of every hit. He wants you to play the drum in the right place, at the right time, with the right sound. The tracking of that record was incredibly time consuming and fulfilling because of it. I basically moved into his house and slept on the floor of his studio and tracked for twelve hours a day. Often just the right hand of an instrument and then later the left hand of the instrument because it was so complex that you couldn’t do it at the same time. Just unbelievable!

Xtreme Music: Talking furthermore about your work with Trey Spruance, are there any particular favourites from that latest release on Mimicry Records which you’d like to mention?

Shahzad Ismaily: My favourites are oddly enough ones that I didn’t play on. For example, he remade a song called “Exodus” that I guess was originally a track on a film score.. Trey is very well versed in philosophy so his records have this huge underpinning of reading and book knowledge underneath them, which I don’t really share unfortunately. But “Exodus” was always a beautiful, fun song to play. Then if I had to pick on that I played on, I think it was called “The 19” and it’s a very loping, weird kinda feel.

Xtreme Music: It’s definitely an incredible album from Secret Chiefs 3, and also one of my personal favourites from that album is that track “Exodus” by Ernest Gold, an amazing composer. You’ve also collaborated with Elysian Fields, could you tell us about your work with Jennifer Charles?

Shahzad Ismaily: Jennifer Charles is, as many would testify to, an illuring figure in terms of her stage presence and just her vocal presence on recording. I think one thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is the fact that the song writing is such a sort of long-term relationship between Oren and Jennifer. The way that I really found that out recently, is that Oren had some free studio time by himself. He decided to go in and just invite some musicians to record one of his songs. His writing, just his chord progressions are so deep and then you add Jennifer into the mix who lyrics are exceptional and who’s vocal presence is exceptional. It’s a really thrilling band to play with because I tend to like very slow, very sad music. When you’re up there playing with them, if everyone is in the moment and the band is playing well together, you experience a sense of timelessness almost immediately, and that’s really wonderful.

Xtreme Music: You’ve had some incredible live performances with Two Foot Yard, Secret Chiefs 3 and Elysian Fields. What has the crowd reaction been like and what would you say has been the most memorable live show that you’ve participated in?

Shahzad Ismaily: Crowd reaction has always been good, I mean Elysian Fields and Secret Chiefs 3 are both bands with a lot of longevity, so they have automatic crowds. I started playing with them very recently and was surprised to find that when you do a show it’s a packed house instantenously. Of course of lot of those are fans so they give you a very warm response. Having just come out of this particular show it’s hard not to say that this was my most memorable show, just because of the closeness of the experience. So in particular tonight we were able to play so quietly and with so much focus that sometimes there was a beautiful tension between one hit on the cymbal and then the next hit on the cymbal. It seemed like there was an eon of space between the two and I was afraid to play it almost the second time.. (laughs). It was really intense!

Xtreme Music: This is my third time seeing Two Foot Yard and I must say this has been.. my favourite experience seeing Two Foot Yard perform. What could you tell us about the writing processes involved in actually composing the music?

Shahzad Ismaily: That’s a good question because be just came from four and a half days at my mother’s place near the border of Canada, near Ottawa. Initially, the writing process was Carla had written all the songs basically on the first record. She met me on tour and said “Would you play drums in this band that I have?” and she knew Marika for a long time. So when we first came in to record that, we hadn’t written anything. Although, it could be argued, as it is with the case with instrumentalists, that you write your own part. Rarely does anyone tell me what to play on drums, so I’m often writing and collaborating in that way. But this last four and a half days was exceptional, because finally after playing long enough, we’re starting to write material together. Like three or four of the new songs we’ve played tonight, literally one section would be written by one person and then the next one by the other person, and then the next one by the other person. Although lyrically it seems to be just a single source.

Xtreme Music: And for my final question I’d like to ask, what future collaborations have you got coming out that you’d like to mention?

Shahzad Ismaily: Well, there are two things that I’m working on a great deal. One is this women named Indigo Morris, who is a songwriter in the New York music scene about three, four, maybe five years ago and has since stopped playing, and kinda gone underground a little bit. She is incredible, I mean she’s probably one of my favourite guitarists in New York, and that’s hard to say because there’s so many amazing guitarists, Marc Ribot etcetera. But her ear for writing guitar parts, her ear for writing melodies, her absolute insistance on the purity of the experience. Because you-know once you become a musician you can be sullied almost immediately by things like the music business, by making records, promoting yourself, flyers. Every step I feel like, and this is probably a little bit hardcore. Every step in that direction removes your initial connection to music as an artform as if you were a child. She retains an absolute insistance on that kind of purity and that’s really overwhelming. The second thing I would suggest looking into is already out, and it’s not a recording I’m on yet, but I’m performing with the band, it’s called Doveman. We are playing tomorrow night at The Tonic here at eight o’clock also. It’s very slow, beautiful, well-crafted music. That’s actually the keyboard player from Elysian Fields.

Xtreme Music: It’s been wonderful to meet you Shahzad Ismaily! Thank you very much for a very insightful interview.