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Lo-Pan Interview with Jesse Bartz: Living a Good Time Fast

This Saturday, Lo-Pan will take the stage as headliners at The Eye of the Stoned Goat 3 in Brooklyn, New York. Sharing the bill with the stalwart Ohio road dogs is a litany of heavy rockers worthy of repute, some labelmates on Small Stone, others up and comers playing with a similarly fuzzed, riff-minded style. All told, The Acheron plays host to one of the sickest lineups of the year on July 27, with Lo-Pan at the top alongside Gozu, Supermachine, Black Black Black, BorrachoWizard Eye, Lord Fowl, Geezer and Wasted Theory, whose own drummer, Brendan Burns (interview here), is responsible for booking the fest.

The Stoned Goat gig comes as the latest in a series of righteous happenings for Lo-Pan, whose considerable touring is beginning to pay off with — what else? — more touring. Making their way into Brooklyn as the final in a set of four dates with Gozu, Lo-Pan have been using July as a vehicle for long weekenders, first with Indianapolis-based rockers Devil to Pay, then a handful of shows including last weekend at StaVentfest in Pennsylvania with D.C.’s Borracho — also playing in Brooklyn — following a couple weeks off after spending the first half of June on tour with Torche and KENmode. All this is ostensibly to support a vinyl reissue through Small Stone of Lo-Pan‘s landmark 2009 sophomore outing, Sasquanaut, which also got a CD revisit in 2011 (review here), but really, it’s just Lo-Pan continuing to do what they do best, and that’s hand-deliver some of the finest fuzz being produced in the US, or anywhere else for that matter.

Since this is all going down even as the band continues to write and road test new material for a follow-up to 2011’s will-still-put-you-on-your-ass-two-years-later third album, Salvador (review here), it seemed to me a prime time to get on the phone with drummer Jesse Bartz (not for the first time) for a brief check-in about the band’s latest doings, how they see the effort and time they’ve put in starting to result in shows  like those with Torche or with High on Fire last fall, the timing on when they’ll look to put the next record to tape, and much more. Bartz — joined in the band by guitarist Brian Fristoe, vocalist Jeff Martin and bassist Scott Thompson — was forthcoming and realistic as ever about the work Lo-Pan has done to this point and the work they still have ahead of them.

So, with The Eye of the Stoned Goat 3 this weekend, a tour with Weedeater next month, the Sasquanaut vinyl out now and their focus geared toward a European tour in support of their next album in 2014, you’ll find my quick Q&A with Jesse Bartz after the jump.

Please enjoy:

It’s kind of weird the way the current shows have been playing out, half a week on, half a week off.

Yeah, it’s been long weekends for us this whole month of July, mostly because we’ve had to balance working and have enough time to do this as well, be on the road as well, sell some more of those Sasquanaut vinyls.

Do you get a chance to get settled at all during the half-week off?

No. (Laughs) Not at all. It’s work nonstop until we go back out. Literally getting off work at noon and leaving for the road at three or four o’clock. Then when we come back, getting home at three o’clock in the morning and getting up for work at like 6:30. Who needs time off though, man? (Laughs) We’ll get enough time off at some point, I’m sure.

How were the shows with Devil to Pay?

Really good. Really good. Those guys are playing a lot of the new material and stuff, and they’re nailing it. Really tight. We’ve played with those guys a lot of times over the years and we dig those guys a lot. They are definitely brothers of ours. They’re really, really playing tight as a unit and stuff right now and writing some really, really good music. We really like being able to see that more than one night in a row. It’s cool to be able to listen to their set over and over again and get more familiarized with their newer music live and stuff.

I talked to Steve not too long ago. I know they were looking forward to going out with you guys again as well.

Absolutely. We’ve always been connected somehow and made many, many fond memories with those dudes. We also look forward to doing more in the future too.

How much of Sasquanaut did you wind up playing each night?

Well, we started off playing the entire album. We did it for the first two nights (laughs), then we talked about it and we were just like, “Man, we are just so much more motivated by our new material right now” and it just didn’t feel right to us. Generally when you’re on the road, you have a lot of disagreements and stuff, and this was one thing we actually all got in the van and looked at each other and were like, “Hey let’s talk about the set real quick,” and everybody was like, “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too!” We just decided to change it up and play some of our newer material for the rest of the evenings and stuff, and there’s just a certain kind of energy or chemistry in new material that you don’t really get out of your material that’s six years old. That album, in what it is, we love that album and we were very fortunate to make that album – but at the same time, that’s just something that is six years old to us and it just does not have the same energy live to us at all, as far as that material goes. The recordings and listening to the recordings is great. But we play select tracks from that album live here and there. We’ve been known to pull out “Dragline,” “Savage Henry,” “Kurtz,” “Wade Garrett” and stuff, but some of the other stuff that’s on that album, we kind of came to the conclusion that there’s reasons we haven’t been playing them live for a while.

I think it’s fair, six years later like you say. It was 2009 the CD came out, so I think it’s reasonable you’d want to move on, especially with another album since and new stuff coming together.

We’re writing a lot now too and we want to stay motivated on that stuff and keeping that fresh in our minds and getting ready to record and stuff.

How’s the writing going?

Really good. We’re probably like nine tracks into it. I think we’re probably gonna write at least four, five more tracks and then head into the studio late fall, sometime over the winter or something.

You going back to Mad Oak?

Right now we’re searching out a couple different options. Mad Oak is definitely one of the options that we’ve been searching out, but we’ve been talking with [Small Stone Records label head Scott] Hamilton about a few other options that might be out there. We’ll just have to see where that goes. We’re not expecting to do it anytime in the near immediate future anyways. We’ve still got a lot more writing before we nail down where and who we want to work with to do the recording.

Do you have any sense of where things have gone since Salvador yet?

You know, I definitely think that we have matured. To me, it feels like we’re starting to hit a real good comfortable stride in our writing. Salvador was like a new experience in writing with a singer that really sings a lot, because Sasquanaut – most of the material – was written before Jeff was part of the band. He put lyrics to the music that we already had. Salvador was the first stuff that we started writing with a  singer and really feeling out how he would fill in over top of what we were doing. Now the newer stuff that we’re doing, really feels like we’re comfortable writing with a singer who really sings and we’re giving each other a lot of the space that we need and also the foundations that we need to be more comfortable with our singer. It’s like the sophomore-with-a-singer now.

I’d imagine that the road time – not that that’s anything new at this point – but that’s got to play into the comfort level.

Absolutely. A lot of the stuff we wrote in a certain way and have road tested it for a while. Some of the stuff that we’ve just written and not necessarily road tested – kind of keep that for the album when that’s coming out and it’ll be some newer material that way too – but for the most part a lot of those things are written more… We’ve actually even shelved three or four now because we had road tested them and didn’t really get what we wanted out of them, so we kind of felt it was better to move onto another song and rewrite for another song.

I think “Eastern Seas” and “Colossus” were the two I’ve seen.

Yup. Those two have stuck around for quite a while and we feel really strong about those two. They’re good energy songs for us and they seem to transition well for us. Really, Jeff ties a lot of that in. He’s coming very, very of age in his singing and feeling a lot more confident with us underneath him as the foundation. I think that really shines through in those songs a lot.

Has there been a difference for you in doing the bigger tours – High on Fire, Torche – than going out on your own?

Yeah, it is definitely different. They’re just two different situations. Very different all the way around. There’s a lot of different examples of how, but they’re very, very different. Night and day differences. I would say that going out on your own and cutting your teeth and paying your dues is exactly that, and it makes those other experiences where you get the chance to do the opening spot or the support slot on some of those bigger tours, it makes those things so much easier when you actually get that opportunity. To be blunt, having your shit together a lot more, because of having those other experiences, makes it a very, very, very fluid situation to be the opener on one of those tours and be done by nine, 10 o’clock and have everything pretty much over and just be selling merch and stuff. Just to be on time and be punctual and be where you’re supposed to be and stuff. It makes a lot more sense when you’ve been doing it for years and years and years on your own, but you don’t really realize it until you’ve actually done a couple other tours that were a different situation where you’re like, “Hey man, this is pretty easy compared to what we’ve done before this” (laughs). It makes a lot more sense when you’re in the situation. You realize that’s a lot of what paying your dues is all about – and not to say we don’t have a lot more dues to pay. We’re very honest about where we’re at and know wholeheartedly that we have a lot more dues to pay and look forward to that too.

You’ve got the the Stoned Goat fest and Weedeater shows coming up. Anything else in the works?

There’s a couple things in the fall that we’ve submitted for and stuff. Nothing really announced yet. But the Weedeater dates are pretty cool. We’ve got a couple ones in Ohio that are festival shows, one being the Blackout Barbecue in August in Kent, with Rebreather, Mockingbird, Ravenna Arsenal. Vulture’s on that, who just announced they’re calling it a day. Really great dudes and girl, Kelly [Gabany]. It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is. I’m sure those people have their own reasons for doing what they want to do out of music. It’ll be cool to be part of some of the wrap-up for Vulture. They’ve been around for a long time.

Do you think you guys will get the chance to get over to Europe for the new record?

Definitely. That’s kind of our gameplan, is to put something together for an early Spring release and hopefully get over there in time to make it and be a part of Roadburn and the Desertfest and stuff. That’s what we would love to do. We’ll just have to see if there’s any interest on their part in booking us and stuff and we’ll go from there. Definitely that is in the gameplan as soon as the album comes out. We’d really like the opportunity. We’ve been trying to start something up going to the European side of things for a while and a couple of them have just fallen apart for one reason or another, but that’s kind of part of just being smarter about making it happen and making sure the timing is right and the situation is right too.

Lo-Pan, Sasquanaut (2009/2011/2013)

Lo-Pan on Thee Facebooks

The Eye of the Stoned Goat 3

Small Stone Records

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