Hackman Enterprise an Even Newer Normal
The love of stoner rock Hackman guitarist/sometimes vocalist Darryl Shepard speaks of below is clearly evident in the feedback intro and lead riff of a song like “Panama” from new album Enterprises. Unlike so much of the US stoner scene, the Boston songwriter embraces the genre’s past, as opposed to those who will tout their band as being anything but stoner rock in hopes of either attaining some measure of commercial success (even if underground) and/or not being pigeonholed in a specific genre — which is basically the same thing.
Following the release of Enterprises, Shepard and drummer Owen parted ways with bassist/founding member Jase, and now are faced with the prospect of having to replace an integral piece of one of the the country’s most promising power riff trios. Following the jump, Shepard discusses that prospect, his love of all things cosmically doomed-out and, of course, the Sox.
As you said yourself in the blog announcement, Jase had been in the band since the beginning and added a lot to the band. What happened that he decided to leave and what are you looking for in a replacement? How much do you want someone to contribute to the songwriting?
Jase is burnt out on playing music right now, and he?s moving to another part of the state, so he felt that it would be best for him to leave Hackman. The door is open for him to come back if he feels like it, but I think he needs to just worry about his life right now and do what?s best for him, and if Hackman isn?t part of that, then we understand. He?s a phenomenally talented individual, and his bass playing is a huge part of Hackman?s sound, so it?s gonna be hard to replace him. For the time being, we?re looking for someone who can learn some of our old songs and also help us with some new stuff we?re working on. It doesn?t necessarily have to be a permanent situation, though if someone comes along and totally blows us away, that would be cool as well.
I write a lot of stuff for Hackman, as did Jase, but our new guitarist Seth also writes a lot of really cool riffs, so right now we?re all set in the song writing department. For a while there, Jase and I were really clicking on the songwriting, where one of us would bring in a riff or two, and then the other person would add to it, and then we?d all arrange it at rehearsal. That worked out really well for a few songs, like ?Bludge,? but we have an abundance of riffs and ideas lying around, so we?re all set in that department.
Is there a chance Seth would move to that slot and the band would look for another guitar player instead, continuing as a trio in the meantime?
I don?t think Seth will be moving into the bassist slot. He?s a great guitar player, but his style just wouldn?t lend itself to playing bass. To be totally honest, I can?t even visualize Seth playing bass. I?ve played bass before here and there, but I?m just concentrating on guitar for now. We did talk a little about trying it with just two guitars and no bass, it?s not unheard of, but ultimately we?re more into the idea of having a bass player. We?re gonna continue to jam and write stuff without a bass player anyway. Hackman didn?t have a drummer for months before Owen joined, but Jase and I just went down to the room anyway and played, just bass and guitar.
Enterprises has some more aggressive parts, but there are moments where the stoner groove is straight up and unabashed. Are you cool with the tag ?stoner rock? or does it bug you as a label?
I have no problem with the ?stoner rock? tag, I really don?t. It?s just a name for a style of music that gives the listener a general idea of what to expect. For me, stoner rock usually means that the guitars are heavily distorted and tuned down, the tempos aren?t very fast, and the songs generally aren?t? three-minute pop songs. It?s really just an extension of grunge, just maybe a little heavier and slower, like grunge?s overweight and clumsy cousin. Ultimately, it?s just heavy rock. Black Sabbath were playing stoner rock back in 1971, before it was called stoner rock. I have no real problem with the term. If someone doesn?t like the term stoner rock then they can call it whatever they want. I?m partial to ?cosmic doom,? myself. Sounds much more sinister. I love heavy rock, I really do. I?m addicted to it. So the stuff that Hackman writes is exactly the kind of music that I?m into. With Enterprises, I was almost trying to paint Hackman into a corner in regards to the whole ?stoner rock? sound. We have a very narrow view of what we want to do and we?re gonna stick to it.
That said, I?ve been wracking my brain for some heavy-ass riff bands from Boston and I?m coming up blank. New England as a whole has had some greats, but thinking of Boston I gravitate more toward the hardcore scene in terms of what comes to mind first. Do you guys have local favorites/heroes, or is it just a case of bringing a new context to outside influences?
There are some really good heavy rock bands in the Boston/Massachusetts area right now. Elder and Black Pyramid are two excellent bands, both are more on the doomier side of things. They?re not from Boston proper, but they do play a lot in town. Finisher is another new band that killed me live. Also, Bloodhorse and Doomriders are both killer, just full-on heavy rock.
Stompbox was a big favorite in Boston when they were around, they were definitely like local heroes. They toured with Kyuss, for God?s sake! The Bags and Bullet LaVolta are a couple more old school Boston bands that just kicked tons of ass. Actually, The Bags are still playing, so they?re still kicking ass. I dig hardcore, I played in Slapshot for awhile, but I don?t really listen to it much anymore. Boston is known as a big hardcore city, but there are a lot of really good heavy rock bands here as well.
Milligram certainly had its noisy parts. What?s the difference in attitudes in your mind between the two bands? When Hackman was coming together, at what point did you know you didn?t want to bring someone in specifically to handle vocals?
Milligram had a little bit more hardcore in its sound, Hackman doesn?t really have that at all. There are a couple of songs on Enterprises that wouldn?t sound out of place in Milligram, like ?Not Anymore and Never Again,? but overall Hackman is more laid back. Being in Milligram was like being in the Marines and you were going into battle every time you played. There was really no fucking around at all. There?s a reason we had a song called ?Let?s Kill.? Also, when I was in Milligram, that was a really dark period for me.? 9/11 happened on the day we were supposed to start recording This is Class War, but I was in New York at the time, so everything was just kind of fucked up, and that was reflected wholly in the music. It wasn?t a very happy time.
When I was first putting Hackman together, I was thinking of doing a project with different singers on different songs and having a very fluid lineup. That didn?t come together, so I started playing with Jase and Todd of Lamont, and we decided from the very beginning to keep it pretty much instrumental with some vocals here and there. I like the idea of a band where there?s not vocals going on all the time, it makes it a little more disjointed in a way. We?ll have a song with a chorus but no verse, or vice versa, and it just makes everything sound a little different. Hackman is really all about The Riff anyway. That?s what the band was founded on, playing riffs. So having less vocals getting in the way of The Riff just works for us. I could listen to a really good riff for days. We don?t plan on adding more vocals at this point. There might actually be a little less vocals on the newer stuff. We?ll see.
Because it?s not listed anywhere else, I?m guessing ?The Blanket? is the secret track on Enterprises. Aside from going drumless, how did the song come about?
?The Blanket? is indeed the secret track. For a few months, Hackman did not have a drummer, it was just Jase and I. We parted ways with Todd because it wasn?t really working anymore on a musical level. And then we started asking around about drummers, and different people said they were gonna come down and play, but things would come up and we still didn?t have a drummer for months. During this time, Jase and I would go to the room and just plug in, turn up and play, just bass and guitar. A couple of ideas surfaced so we booked a day at Mad Oak Studios just to record some of this stuff and mess around with it, see what we could do with it. ?The Blanket? is the result of that. I really dig it, it?s one of my favorite things I?ve recorded. I don?t view it as a throw-away track or anything. We didn?t know what to do with it though, it didn?t really fit in with the rest of the album. So we buried it at the end of Enterprises as its own thing. It?s almost like a bonus EP or something, and Scott [Hamilton] at Small Stone was fine with having it hidden at the end of the CD. I would like to do some more stuff like ?The Blanket.?
How much of the writing for Enterprises were you responsible for? What is the process like to get the songs in their final form? Does each member add a part, or is it all conceived from the outset?
I was responsible for about half of the writing on Enterprises. Some songs I wrote entirely, like ?Monoceros.? Some stuff Jase wrote; ?War Gong? is basically his baby. Other times, I would have a couple of riffs and not know what to do with them, so I would bring them to rehearsal and show the guys, and we?d build on it and bang it into some sort of shape. Generally the arrangements are hammered out at practice. Owen is a guitar player as well as a drummer, so he thinks of music from a songwriting point of view and he comes up with some really cool arrangement ideas. It really depends on the song and how much you have invested in it. Sometimes I?ll bring a riff to practice and be like, ?Here?s a riff, do what you want with it, have your way with it.? Other times I?m very protective of them.
A couple of things on Enterprises are solo pieces. ?C?est la Mort? is just me on guitar, one take, with a delay pedal making loops. That?s something I?ve been working on, building loops and adding to them and having all these different parts go together, seeing how much I can build on it. ?End of Men? is just Jase on acoustic guitar. It?s something he wrote and we all really dug it, so it?s on the album. Like I mentioned earlier, Jase is incredibly talented. He also played trumpet on The New Normal.
Andrew f?ing Schneider. The guy gets some of the sickest, thickest guitar tones around. What was his studio like in comparison to Moontower, where you did The New Normal, and how was it working with him in general? How long did the recording process last?
What can I say about Andrew other than that he totally and completely rules? He knows how to get the sickest sounds and is not afraid of having something sound ?wrong,? which is important, I think. He comes from more of a ?noise? background, so he?s into extreme tones and stuff like that. When we first started recording Enterprises, the guitar tone I had was so dirty and gross, I didn?t know if I wanted to keep it, I thought it might be too much. But Andrew loved it and thought it sounded great, so we kept it and then when I added a second guitar, we cleaned that one up a little bit, so the full sound is a combination of the two. Plus, Jase?s bass sound on the album is one of the best I?ve heard, it sits perfectly in the mix. You can totally hear it, but it doesn?t swallow up the guitars. And it?s really dirty and meaty. That?s because Andrew knows what the hell he?s doing.
The studio where we recorded The New Normal is a pretty small place, and we were only in there for a day, so I don?t really have any attachment to it. We recorded and mixed that album in one marathon day, like 15 hours or something. Andrew didn?t record that one, that was Marc Schleicher. Plus, it was all digital, but that?s all we could work with at the time. Andrew records to two inch tape, so that made a big difference to the sound of Enterprises. Andrew?s studio is great, it?s definitely ?his place,? so he knows how to get killer sounds there. He was really into what we were doing, so that helps. When the person recording your band is really into it, it makes it that much easier.
The recording was split up over two weekends. We?d load in on Friday night, get started, spend the entire day Saturday working, and then finish up any little details on Sunday. The mixing went by pretty quickly because Andrew got great sounds to begin with, so nothing had to be fixed in the mix. A lot of the time it was just a matter of getting a good balance of the sounds, as there wasn?t much more to mix than drums, bass, two guitars and maybe some vocals (which didn?t take much time at all to record). As far as I?m concerned, Andrew is one of the best engineers/producers out there, right alongside people like Steve Albini or Billy Anderson. Andrew?s the man.
Assuming you guys have real lives, jobs, etc., what are the prospects for Hackman hitting the road behind Enterprises? Do you prefer staying local to Boston, or is it just a case of what time and money permit?
Hackman probably won?t be doing any extensive touring. We all have jobs and need to pay rent and bills and all that fun stuff, so we can?t be driving around the country in a van playing to six people in Utah on a Tuesday night. I mean, that?s fun, I?ve done that, but we?re all older now and can?t be trying to find new jobs all the time. It?s just not something we can do. We?ll probably stick to the New England/Northeast region for shows. And even then, we don?t play live a whole hell of a lot. It?s easy to get burned out doing something too much. I like playing shows now and then, but it can turn into a huge pain in the ass very quickly. I?d like to avoid that if at all possible. I love playing music, I don?t want to get sick of it.
And finally: Go Sox?
Of course! I?m from Boston. Plus, we don?t have to worry about Manny [Ramirez] and if he?ll decide to play or not this season. He?s somebody else?s problem now.
See Hackman’s enterprising MySpace page
