The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Gray Bouchard of Salem Wolves

—

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

It’s tricky to define what I do – not because it’s particularly innovative, but because there are little nuances to it that are driven by who I am, little nuances so deep and elemental to me that I can’t really describe them. For all intents and purposes, I am a “rock & roller.” I play music with loud guitars, driven by emotion and excitement. But every time I say I play “rock” it feels too small, so limited. I pull little patches of genres and songs I like – sometimes metal, sometimes punk, sometimes soul or doo-wop or pop or whatehave you. I stick them in my head and at some point, I sit down with an instrument and twisted-up, lo-fi versions of them come back out. They’ve all melded together into something else. The chunks may be recognizable, but they can no longer be separated.

I started calling what I do “psychotronic” inspired by the old Psychotronic Video Review magazines. It feels right, the musical equivalent of a b- or z-movie (fast, cheap and weird from birth). It’s not meant to be oblique or overly precious. It’s just meant to give folks a little indication that this isn’t the same thing as Tedeschi Trucks Band without telling too much.

Describe your first musical memory.

My memory is pretty spotty, but my first musical memories involve family reunions up in the Thousand Islands on what we called “Camp Bouchard”. I may have been 7 or 8 years old. Camp Bouchard had its own theme song, only the first lines of which I recall:

“Camp Bouchard, Camp Bouchard
Where the river’s cold and the beach is hard
Camp Bouchard, Camp Bouchard
Always in our hearts…”

My family all played instruments and sang when we were up there. My father would occasionally join in with my uncles Joe and Albert for a song about Godzilla that I quite enjoyed. My uncle Albert would typically run into the the cabin mid-song and emerge with an oversized foam Godzilla head, much to to the delight of myself and my cousins.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

My best musical memory was opening for Dirreaha Planet at a sold out show in 2018. Just the excitement in the air, the joy. It’s unforgettable.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Right around 2010, I moved from NYC to Altoona, PA, to write, record and play with my band. Our drummer’s parents lived in Altoona so I stayed rent free in their basement. The argument was that, by living somewhere where the cost of living was almost nothing, we didn’t need jobs and could devote all our time to playing music.

This was a disastrous idea. We did a short tour, the band dissolved in acrimony and drunkenness. I moved back in with my parents, still fixated on the idea that I would tour on my own, building a fanbase one poorly attended show at a time. I booked acoustic shows up and down the East Coast. I slept in my van and on couches. I drank too much. At a show at the Bug Jar in Rochester, NY, I sprained my ankle during a gig that I was limping for 2 weeks.

The idea I had was that comfort was some kind of compromise: To seek a comfortable life, to actively pursue having a day job or a relationship or family was to divert resources away from the dream, the ambition. If you had a day job, if you wanted to sleep in a bed with clean sheets, you were a dilettante. Not that you had to suffer to make art, but if you weren’t making art all the time you were letting yourself down. Trying to sleep in the back of a van with my ankle throbbing testing this belief. Frankly, it sucked to live like this. It sucked to think about years to come spent sleeping on floors, living off the drink tickets and t-shirt sales. “Paying your dues” that way felt like a drag. I like sleeping in a bed, I liked having some cash in my pocket. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t glamorous to live and tour like that.

So I gave it up. Not music — clearly, I’m still as involved as I ever was. But I haven’t cold-called venues to book a Tuesday night in Upstate New York in February. If we tour, we budget for a hotel room if we can’t find a friend to crash with. I’ve had a dayjob since there, cultivating a professional career alongside the musical one. I try and work smarter, not harder. Maybe it’s held me back musically. Maybe it hasn’t. I don’t really think about it day to day, and that’s kind of the point.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Artistic progression leads wherever it leads. It depends on the artist and the nature of the progression. There’s no set path. Sometimes it leads you away from what you’ve done into strange and impenetrable new places. Sometimes it just means refining what you’ve been doing for years. For myself, I don’t really think too much about artistic progression outside of getting kind of bored writing the same song over and over again.

How do you define success?

I think success is a spectrum. On one end, you have the teenage fantasies of fortune and fame. You’re playing the biggest stadiums, showing up in your own bus (no sharing with the other blokes in the band;, you sell tons of albums; you have enough money to buy god; and when you do the thing when you stop a song to let the audience sing it’s the loudest sound you’ve ever heard.

On the other end of the spectrum, maybe you die in a bad apartment somewhere with a busted-up Martin that’s missing a couple of strings in your hand, but people care about it. People care about you. They miss you and they sing your songs. Weird little labels in podunk Midwest towns put out reissues of your bedroom recordings and people pass them around when they’re driving around stoned in high school.

These days, I define success as having a day-to-day career in music that is comfortable and engaging. It doesn’t have to be glamorous; sometimes I fantasize about being Toad the Wet Sprocket or Tonic and playing a country fair in Des Moines to folks eating elephant ears and getting paid $5k for the gig. Would I crave more? Maybe. But it’s comfortable and it’s a career doing the thing I love to do. I have enough money to make another record and release it myself. It won’t be the smash that I made when I was 26, but I’ll feel pretty good about it and the trueheads will make an impassioned argument tio their skeptical friends that “this one is actually the best one if you really listen to it.” And at the next country fair or radio-sponsored beach bash, I’ll play with other one-hitters and also-rans and the people will sing along to that song I wrote. I’ll see them smiling. And I’ll smile.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

One of the most complicated musical moments in my life involved when my band opened for Roky Erickson. Roky was and is a huge influence on me. This was about a year before he passed away and he was touring, supposedly recovered from years in the schizogenic wilderness. When the show rolled around, we were backstage with him and his partner. He was big, he was hairy, he took up more than half the couch. He was hard to miss but still seemed… absent.

His partner gently asked me if I could operate the TV in the dressing room – Roky wanted to watch something. I scanned the channels, stopping at each one to let his partner ask, “Roky, do you want to watch this?” The tone of her questions was clear and kind, like you’d ask a child what shoes they’d like to wear today. Roky would slowly shake his head “no” before alighting on a police procedural that earned a solemn nod of approval. He never spoke.

Later, when Roky took the stage, he was led out by his son and bandmate. He was seated, a silver guitar slung over him. He stared straight ahead, scarcely moving. The guitar remained mostly untouched in his lap through the set, save for a few clumsy and unamplified licks he attempted about midway through the set. But when he opened his mouth, he sounded like ROKY. That voice was remarkably untouched by time, clear and sharp as a shard of glass.

It was a remarkable sight, one I sometimes wish I hadn’t seen. It was both mesmerizing and sad: Roky the man was gone but the voice remained, that bloody hammer he’d been gifted with still capable of swinging. I’m not sure if I believe that it was Roky’s own wish to be there that night, and I’m even less sure he was in a state to articulate his wishes. I don’t think Roky was being exploited or abused – the guy had committed himself to living in a state of heightened musical ruin since he was 15 years old. This was what he did and he was damn good at it in his way. But what else was left?

I think about how so many artists say they’d rather die on stage than in a hospital bed. That’s romantic, but maybe there’s a middle way. Maybe Roky just wanted to be home with his family, where he knew how to operate his own TV remote, rather than being shuttled from mid-size local club to mid-size local club just so he could pay for his insulin.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I’ve always wanted to create a top-to-bottom concept record. As in “go into the studio with an idea, don’t come out until you’ve explored every avenue”. A lot of the songs I’ve written are conceptual, but I rarely get the time to drill down on a single idea and unify everything like that.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

The most essential function of art is to express, to communicate. Sometimes it’s a two-way mirror: The artist doesn’t know who they’re talking to and it’s less a conversation than a monologue. Sometimes it’s directed at someone or something. Art is about connecting in a way where words and conversation fails. It’s a direct line to emotion.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Taking my daughter to the movies.

http://facebook.com/salemwolves
https://www.instagram.com/salemwolves/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4QeirCHmAeMw7RpsXXf72T?si=bLZfsv47RMy84AIvAo_cjA
https://salemolves.bandcamp.com/

Salem Wolves, Never Die!!! (2021)

Salem Wolves, “Turn to Gold” official video