1 Built to Spill from left: Jim Roth, Doug Martsch, Brett Nelson, and Scott Plouf
deWilde, Autumn
Doug Martsch
Issue #27
The Built to Spill frontman talks about his experiences of the Seattle-Olympia scene, his youth in Boise, and his unique method of translation
By
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
I grew up in rural England, in the kind of place that can only be described as quaint. As a small child, these bucolic surroundings felt like one big playground, but when I turned 15, that all changed. I had just started listening to alternative music — emblematic ’70s punk, the more obvious grunge and metal bands — and I spent hours every week pouring over the pages of the NME for bands playing in nearby towns. I didn’t have access to music in the same way that kids from big cities did. Being a music fan took more effort and was the only thing that stopped me from going stir-crazy.
For Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch, who grew up in Boise, Idaho — a town nestled against the foothills of the Rockies — small-town music scenes are vital. Barring heavyweight musician Tad Doyle (of early ’90s Seattle band Tad), and its brief cameo in Pink Flamingos as the only town John Waters found to be more disheartening than Baltimore, Martsch might be Boise’s only claim to fame.
“I was raised in Twin Falls, Idaho, but moved to Boise when I started high school,” recalls Martsch, via telephone, with his little Maltese dog audible in the background. “Back then, the idea that you could just make records — that you didn’t have to be a great musician or have a record company backing you up — made a big impression on me. Those things weren’t necessary if you had ideas.”
In the early ’90s, the Pacific Northwest was convulsing with burgeoning creativity: makeshift record companies were being constructed from the ground up; kids from backwater towns in and around Washington were picking up guitars and forming bands. Obscured by the overarching success of Nirvana and Sub Pop Records, many of those bands remain unnoticed. By the time Martsch moved to Seattle in the late ’80s, grunge had already taken hold.
“After high school, I joined the hardcore band State of Confusion and then moved up to Seattle and formed Treepeople,” Martsch says. “We were part of an all-ages punk-[TK omit hyphen?] rock scene, instead of the Sub Pop scene, which was dominating music there. We were really excited because we were going to make a single with [Nirvana producer] Jack Endino. At that time, being around Jack Endino was very exciting.”
On the tail end of limited success with Treepeople, who eventually disbanded in 1994, Martsch returned to Boise in 1992 and formed Built to Spill. Around the same time, he started the Halo Benders with the unstoppable Calvin Johnson. “One day, when I was living back in Idaho, I called Calvin up and asked him to collaborate with me,” recounts Martsch. “I had met him on a Treepeople tour, and although he wasn’t into Treepeople, some people he knew liked us and convinced him that I was worth dealing with.” The Halo Benders’ last release was 1998’s The Rebels Not In. With the Halo Benders, Martsch and Johnson were responsible for the song “Bombshelter Part 2,” one of the most powerful anti-war songs ever written. “Oh, that song? That’s a great song,” Martsch says, animatedly. “It’s Calvin talking about this monument in Washington for people who fought and died in wars. But he’s saying how he’d like to see a monument for all the people he thinks are heroes — people who have independent minds and don’t kill people because they’re told to.”
Fourteen years since he started Built to Spill — and after an 18-month hiatus — Martsch reconvened with bass player Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf for the band’s fourth Warner Bros. studio album, You in Reverse, released on Warner Bros. in April. After 2001’s Ancient Melodies of the Future, Martsch wanted a break from making records with Built to Spill. You in Reverse is their first record to be self-produced since 1993’s Ultimate Alternate Wavers. Martsch decided to circumvent his reliance on longtime producer Phil Ek “just to see what would happen.”
The album opener, “Goin’ Against Your Mind,” captures something of Built to Spill’s hypnotic live energy, spanning almost nine minutes. Martsch’s repetitive refrain eddies through frenetic distortion and propulsive drumming, setting the tone for the remainder, generating a record replete with ominous unbridled psychedelia. “We got together for a week every couple of months and jammed,” Martsch says. Recording these jams onto numerous hours of ADAT tape (which is used for simultaneously recording eight-tracks of digital audio), they excavated the results, honing on the spontaneity of these jams with equal collaborative effort on all sides. You in Reverse feels more foreboding than Built to Spill’s previous efforts, engendered by Martsch’s political concerns. “Over the past few years, things have gotten a lot more intense, which I think comes through on this record. If nothing else, just the heavy feel of it.”
Despite taking time off from Built to Spill, Martsch still found time to get together with some friends and cover a couple of songs. “During our break, I did a covers band with some local guys, which started off as a jamming exercise,” Martsch says.
“We covered ‘Ashes to Ashes’ by David Bowie, a Delusions song called ‘Strange,’ ‘I’m Glad’ by Captain Beefheart, and a song from this series of compilations called The Secret Museum of Mankind, which is a load of recordings from the ’20s and ’40s from around the world,” he says. “I don’t know how to pronounce the names of the songs, or who sings them, so I just listened to them over and over again and wrote down English words that sounded most like the words he was singing. Who knows? Maybe it translates perfectly.”
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