The Trashcan Sinatras chat with Chris Simpson about Minor League baseball, late shifts at the Post Office, ghost records, and the importance of 'having your tunes…'
The Trashcan Sinatras hail from Glasgow, Scotland, and have been making lovely records, bursting at the seams with timeless songs that belie their own literary cleverness with a rare and downright impossible-to-dismiss earnestness since sometime in the late 1980's or early 1990's. The first two records (Cake, and I've Seen Everything, respectively) sold quite well and even presented the band with a few of what you might call 'hits', establishing that ever-elusive prize which is an international cult fanbase of sorts. Label woes saw to it that the third full-length, A Happy Pocket, snuck out of the gates to unfortunately lesser fanfare, but rewarded those who were able to track it down with some of their wittiest and most straightforward gems to date. After a series of false starts, and a long lay-off, their fourth and most recent record Weightlifting finally saw release last year. A more subdued but equally if not more sublime offering, Weightlifting and a handful of EP's and bootlegged B-sides compilations, along with a slew of international touring, has established what feels like a bit of a Trash Cans 'renaissance' as of late. After sitting down and talking with Frank Reader (vocals and guitar) and John Douglas (guitar and vocals) at SXSW recently, I feel more obligated than ever to tell you that you should really consider picking up any one or all of these fine records, settling down with it and seeing where it takes you…
Frank Reader: (recalling the events following a show in Denver, CO last year)
Yeah, that was the night we went back, we got like eight of us in a small car…We went to a party afterwards, some girl was driving, it was a tiny car, there was eight or nine of us in it. We were so drunk, you know, we hadn't had any kind of rest. We were all crammed up against the windshield…
John Douglas: Yeah, I remember that…
Frank: It was up in some bar, we talked to these folks…
John: No, actually it was a disco…
Frank: Yeah, so we're talking to the people who were at the disco, and there was a minor league baseball player there, and he was a pitcher…and he signed a ball for me, so… that's about the closest I've ever gotten to a real major leaguer…
Chris Simpson: They've always had great minor league baseball in Denver.
Frank: Really?... that's great…
Chris: So do you guys, when you're home, have to have day jobs?
Frank: No…
John: No…
Chris: That's good… I was expecting a different answer.
Frank: No, we live pretty close to the bone sometimes, but we manage. I had a job last year. I worked at the post office for a while. It was okay, you know, a regular income.
Chris: We're you driving a mail cart, or…?
Frank: No, it was through the night, just sorting and what not.
Chris: I see.
Frank: Yeah, it was fun. You meet a lot of strange people working the night shift…
Chris: Yes, you do. I love that…
Frank: You know, five minutes talking to them and they'll tell you their entire life story. Just something about it...
Chris: Yeah, I've had a lot of those kinds of jobs, and I've always found that… there's just something more literary, for lack of a better term, about the lifestyles of people who work those sorts of jobs, you know?...
Frank: Yeah, maybe, the nocturnal ones anyway…
Chris: They've always got some interesting story that's slightly left of normal, or something…
Frank: Yeah…
John: Vampires…
Frank: Yeah, the vampires, you know, you die a lot younger, it's bad for your heart, you'll be up all night. Your body gets old faster…
John: Smoking lots of cigarettes…
Frank: Yeah, smoking lots of cigarettes… And some of the guys in there were really ghoulish, really lugubrious... like Bela Lugosi or something…
Chris: So, have you guys begun any work on a new record of any kind?
John: Uh, a couple songs…a couple songs…We're thinking about getting some stuff together soon…
Frank: It's in the nascent stages... Yeah, we're very, um…I mean, it's something we should do, actually, we're kind of falling behind a bit. I think we should start kind of working on it really, really soon. I don't want to go through that again, that kind of long lay-off again…
Chris: Like before Weighlifting, you mean?...
Frank: Yeah, I don't think we could. I mean, we'd be, what, 50 if we did that?... something like that, you know?...
Chris: That's something that I think is really great about you guys. I've always admired bands that work at their own pace, and don't seem as concerned with the, kind of, machinery of the industry as they do with just their craft, or their work…
John: Yeah, well… that comes first, you know? If that's not right, then the rest of it's a mess. If you're not confident that you've done your best, then I don't know how you can stand to take on the rest of it.
Frank: You have to have your tunes with you, you know?... It's just like anybody, you know, it's empty without a set of tunes…
John: I think it's a shame though… It does take a lot of time for us for some reason…
Frank: But we're not totally blind to other concerns, I mean, I think we do kind of think of it…
John: Well, and the years have opened our eyes. You know what's what sort of. You know, you learn a few lessons along the way. We're a bit more relaxed now, because we can recognize the wrong things to do…
Chris: You learn what doesn't work for you…
John: Yeah…you know, risky situations, and what not…
Frank: We smell them a lot earlier, but we still fall into one or two of them…
Chris: Well, that's all part of the process, sure… Did you guys tour the US much, early on, for the first two records?
Frank: Yeah, actually, two or three sort of national tours here.
John: It was kind of an eye opener. We didn't really gig much before we got a record deal, just kind of local gigs and what not. So, coming here and getting into it, it kind of took a while you know? By the end of that, you know, after three or four years of us doing that, we're much more confident now, as players. You know, you kind of get your set together...
Chris: Yeah, and your sets have been great… Although, admittedly, I never saw you guys live until the last tour over here, last year…
Frank: Yeah, and of course we we're starting again then, practically. We'd forgot what we learned…you know? We had been doing sporadic gigs here and there, but we could never really get any momentum going, you know, within the band itself. We couldn't really, you know, just settle into the songs, and with every gig being an isolated gig, it was full of nerves, and so we'd never really get to enjoy it either, so…The thing about touring last year, it was just amazing, and it's just a great pleasure for us, cause I think we're much more good-humored about it now. But then we were nervous, and it was I think a wee bit more debauched as well. I mean, it wasn't quite "No one here gets out alive" but it was quite debauched, and now it's a bit more like gentlemen just touring the country, you know? Just popping into town and doing our business, and treating everyone nice and being treated nice, and avoiding the pitfalls, you know?...
Chris: So do you guys record most of your stuff yourself?
John: Well, we have engineers…
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Chris: But you have, or record at, your own place?
John: Yeah, we did. We had our own studio for the first ten years or so. The first three records were done there. And then the last record was done at a studio called Riverside in Glasgow. But pretty much we've been the boss behind them all. Once all the writing gets done, other people get involved, you know, but we were always around. Then with the last one we did something different with the mixing- kind of sent it off to a guy who was recommended to us. So we didn't get involved in that phase, really…
Chris: Sometimes it's nice… Especially after being so involved in the whole writing and recording process just to get some fresh ears on it at that point…
Frank: Yeah, also, it's just something that you really need to be focused on and working on, and kind of in the zone of, and we were in rehearsals for tour at the time and stuff. So, it was really the only thing to do, you know, to sort of give it to someone who'd been doing it for the last three years you know, and hadn't been locked up in their house working on songs… So that was Andy Chase from Ivy who did all that stuff, in New York…We just sent all the files over, and he did it over there and he sent us back a couple mixes that we didn't really like, so we sort of said, 'No, that's not the right thing.' So we thought, 'Well, we'll do it ourselves', still in that mode of thinking we could do it ourselves, but we went and mixed one, and it was just a nightmare. You know, cause we don't actually know what we're doing, and it was just like sitting there and thinking, 'You know, I can't even really hear this." But, we thought we got something pretty good out of it, so we played it, and then, just sort of on a whim, played Andy Chase's next to it, cause we'd done the same song… and it was just, sort of hit us, you know like that breeze over there, it was really like, "Oh, right, right, okay…sorry Andy… you know we said we didn't want you to do it… well, we do want you…" So, fortunately he was very gracious about it.
Chris: So, with A Happy Pocket it seemed like sort of a ghost record in the US. It seems like it never properly came out over here.
John: No, it really didn't…
Frank: It was a corpse in the UK as well…
John: No, it was some thing with the record company, the people at our label had a falling out with the American label at the time, and then they got bought over, and I think it just slipped through the cracks.
Frank: I think the record was made under weird conditions as well. We were feeling a lot of the pressure, I think, and maybe our confidence had been eaten away a little bit I think by the lack of the kind of success that maybe we had anticipated or hoped for. So we were feeling a lot of that, and we weren't really the most confident band. And I think there was a lot of remixing going on, so… I think the songs are great, and we love playing them live, and that was another thing about not coming over here is that we didn't get a chance to play a lot of that stuff, and so coming over last year was the first time really for a lot of people to hear that stuff.
Chris: Yeah, I remember being very excited that you played so much from that record.
Frank: A lot of it's been rehabilitated in our own minds thanks to that tour.
Chris: I really think it's a great record.
Frank: Yeah, it's got some good stuff. There's some good words on it I think. And, you know, a good sleeve.
Chris: Definitely a good sleeve.
John: The singles off that were great, too. We did some really great b-sides for those.
Frank: It'd be good to get a b-side kind of album together. We're still trying to do that. We're still trying to get a hold of masters and what not. Even just to borrow them and rate them, you know. I don't know, you phone up whoever owns it now, I think… is it still Universal?... Well, it went from Polygram to some other 'gram,' Seagram, maybe… and then it went to Universal. It's like you phone up people, and people are like, "Who are you?"… I don't know…
Chris: Does it feel strange at all with the new record to be, in some cases, kind of touring and playing and supporting songs that, some of which are so old now, because of the long sort of birthing process for the record?
Frank: Right…yeah… some of them we'll be playing, we'll be like, "Let's try that," and then sort of half way through playing it we'll realize that we're not really so into it anymore. You know, it just doesn't sit right, or something? But in general I don't think we really feel that. With the good songs we don't feel like throwing them away. There kind of like just the big brothers of the other songs you know, the older ones. The older members of the family.
Chris: Do you guys find yourself playing or even wanting to play anything off of Cake anymore?
Frank: Generally not. I don't know if we're the same band, really, in a lot of ways, you know? I think, obviously there are people who want to hear them. And one or two of them, we like to play them, and trot them out, and you know, it's nice to see people smile.
Chris: It's the fine line between entertaining, and playing things that you know you can really connect with yourself.
Frank: Yeah, and you've got to, you know. Course, I don't know what it's like playing electric guitar, but when you're singing you've really got to feel something for it, you know. And you know even with one or two of them, that's more difficult than with other songs. We've had a few sort of tense moments in dressing rooms after shows, cause you always [have] some fans, some sort of older fans back stage with a few drinks in them going, "How come you didn't play that or this?" And you're like, "Sorry, sorry, sorry…" There's a lot of apologizing as a result, you know. And that's no good. You don't want to be playing a great gig and coming off and apologizing.
Chris: Do you guys find in Scotland, do you have much relationship to a lot of the younger bands that have started up there more recently and had some international success?
John: You know we like to go check things out. If someone says some new band's good, I'll go check it out. I saw recently a group called Sons And Daughters and really liked them. They're a really great live band, really rocking.
Chris: Do you feel like, uh, this could be an awkward question… but do you feel like you have some sort of pseudo-legendary status, or are looked up to in some way by some of the younger bands in Glasgow?
John: We got asked to play a gig with Belle And Sebastian in Glasgow recently, and Stevie, their guitar player, introduced us from stage as the "legendary Trashcan Sinatras"… but we all hesitated because, like felt weird about going out there, so…
Frank: In Scotland it's very funny, because as opposed to scenes here, it a very small place. And we were based in Kilmarnock, which is about 30 miles from Glasgow, and kind of always felt like way out of it, you know. We were really kind of isolated, and weren't really aware that people were aware of us. And recently we kind of all moved to Glasgow, just within the last few years, and just meeting people, like the DelGados who have cited us a bit. And you know, it's nice to know that that was happening. Puts a sort of rosy complexion on the past, to know that people were admiring us before we knew. But you know, half of them are older than us, maybe, you know, cause we started quite young, so…
Chris: When you guys were younger and first starting to play together, was there anyone local or regional that you sort of looked up to or admired?
John: I remember buying the Walk Across the Rooftops record by The Blue Nile, and I just couldn't believe that someone from 30 miles away from us had made that record.
Frank: Yeah, and Teenage Fanclub as well, I think in the same way John was saying about the Blue Nile, which is this sort of other-worldly music. The Fan club, you always felt were just really being themselves, that there was no pretense about them. And I just got the feeling that that was kind of unusual at the time. For me it seemed odd, like, "These guys are really just, you know, guys… and they're from the same town as us…" So, I was always kind of inspired by that.
Chris: Great, well thank you guys both so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Good luck on the rest of your trip and the upcoming tours and the next record and all.
Frank: Yeah, thank you.
John: Cheers.
Originally appeared in Hybrid Magazine |
