All Smiles
All Smiles' Jim Fairchild talks Modest Mouse, band chemistry and his favorite songs.
Jim Fairchild has had a pretty amazing career. The former guitarist for Gra n daddy now sits comfortably in Modest Mouse, but also has a solo project in the form of All Smiles. Fairchild took some time out of his preparation for the upcoming Modest Mouse tour to talk about All Smiles new album and his other illustrious projects.
HEAVEmedia: What makes you so happy about Oh, For The Getting And Not Letting Go?
Jim Fairchild: Maybe the part that makes me the happiest is probably the fuck that it’s finally fucking done. I’m very happy about some of the improvements and changes from the first All Smiles record to this one. I’m happy that it was kind of a more collaborative affair, because that’s what I imagine my songs becoming. The first record I made was pretty much just me, but a few of my friends would come over and play drums on some uncompleted songs. They would come in and I would say, “Play what you want on here.” Maybe I’d give them a little bit of guidance. But with this one, with Oh, For The Getting And Not Letting Go it was a case of my friends and me all working on stuff together.
I’m just a big fan of collaborating. I know it isn’t always possible, and it’s better to do things alone in some respects at sometimes, but my ideal situation is to have a group of people around me that I can bounce ideas off of. There is just strength there.
HEAVEmedia: Where did the name come from?
Jim Fairchild: That is kind of a tough one to explain. It’s a matter of trying to let go of past failures and successes and not let memory dictate something. I get freaked out a lot, sometimes. I let the past bog me down too much, whether it’s good or bad memories. I think I’m constantly trying to figure out how memory makes you the person you are and I’m trying to just go forward instead of living in the same spot.
HEAVEmedia: How much influence did Brian Deck have on the record?
Jim Fairchild: Brian probably had less influence than I would have liked him to have. He mixed the first record. We had talked a lot about him producing the second one. When I lived in Chicago he would get off work in Wicker Park and would come over to my house in Ukrainian Village and we would just sit and talk about the songs. I would play them for him and he would make some comments. We kept trying to figure out when we were going to make the record. In my mind the songs were done a few years ago. I had submitted demos for all the songs about two years ago – and some of the people we were partnered up with didn’t want us to proceed with those songs. Brian and I felt confident that we had a record. Brian couldn’t take it anymore, and politely said, “I can’t fucking do this anymore.” The record was supposed to start on three different occasions and at the third occasion a session was cancelled like a week before. He just couldn’t do it anymore.
HEAVEmedia: Bummer.
Jim Fairchild: Totally, but I’m happy with the record.
HEAVEmedia: You were in Grandaddy, did some stuff with Earlimart and are now a full member of Modest Mouse. These are genre-defining bands. How do you step back from all of that and make a solo record?
Jim Fairchild: I guess that part is becoming more and more easy. It wasn’t easy at first at all. I had no confidence about it. Although I can go back and listen to the first record and be charmed about it. I wasn’t at first. The third record is already pretty much written and I have a pretty confident group of songs. I know they won’t be recorded in the same way, though.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. You can say Modest Mouse is a legendary band. Or that Grandaddy is a significant indie band. I used to look at it and say, “Well, shit. I’ll never measure up to anything I do in these bands.” Or I can go, “Well I was apart of all that stuff for some reason.” I’ve always written songs, I’ve just never been as confident as Jason from Grandaddy was about putting them out front, or as Modest Mouse is as a band. I think I’ve come to realize that it actually gives me strength. I don’t think that I can’t do shit as cool as that. I want to do shit as cool as that.
HEAVEmedia: You already have the third album done? When will you record that?
Jim Fairchild: Probably sometime this fall. More than anything I just want to catch up. Oh, For The Getting And Not Letting Go was written two years ago and finally got finished late last year. A bunch of happy accidents happened to stop the yet to be recorded one from coming out late last year, early this year. Being in Modest Mouse takes up a lot of time, but I’d say that’s a pretty good thing to have on your plate to distract you from other things.
HEAVEmedia: I’m sure being in Modest Mouse doesn’t suck.
Jim Fairchild: (laughs) Oh no, It’s actually just fine. But I think in the fall I’ll be able to make this record. There is also an EP that comes before and after Oh, For The Getting And Not Letting Go that will be out sometime this fall, too. If we can find the time, because Modest Mouse is pretty busy until the end of September. We are doing some more stuff in December, as well. Maybe in October we can find the time to make the new record.
HEAVEmedia: You’ve dealt with major labels and you’ve dealt with no labels at all. Where do you see the future going?
Jim Fairchild: These current times are demonstrating that you need music that people really want to hear, or you need ideas on how to get people to hear it, but that might make you lose credibility pretty quickly. At one point the labels were able to hand you so much money, and if they can hand you that money then you had to take it and you had to believe they knew what they were doing. But we’ve come to find out that labels sign a lot of really fucking awful bands. They also often don’t know how to make really good music get hurt. I think the contents of this big murky music swamp are starting to clear out and we are seeing people with good ideas rise to the top.
I see labels like Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian – collectives like that are putting out good music pretty consistently. They are getting some people to hear it pretty consistently – Merge is doing the same thing. That is what it’s going to require. I don’t think the physical mean is going to go away. There is always going to be a percentage of people who want vinyl. I guess my overarching point is that you have to be totally content with the idea that people can get whatever they want for free at any point. What can you offer that would make people want to be a part of what you are doing? That is what it comes down to.
For instance, could I make All Smiles the hub of some sort of community? That is the ultimate goal. I’ve never made very much money playing music. I’ve been a professional musician for twelve or thirteen years and what would be the best outcome? To able to sustain it and continue to make music and have it be my focus would be great. The more I focus on it the better I do it, and the reason I do it is to try and express something that I think a lot of other people feel as well. So if you can create some sort of conversation or community around the work that you are doing, whether that is based around commiserating or sharing joy together. If you can make something that people can join around this commonality then that would be really cool, and it’s more possible now than it’s ever been. Everybody has access to everything all the time, and are you giving access to something that people want to be apart of?
HEAVEmedia: The whole community idea kind of gives a new meaning to the band name All Smiles.
Jim Fairchild: That is really what I would like it to be. That’s why I chose it to be a band name instead of just calling it Jim Fairchild. The idea of solo artists, and I’m not saying that Bob Dylan shouldn’t exist because that guy is a fucking deity to me, but I don’t think anything exists in a vacuum. Even though All Smiles is sometimes just me, I don’t feel like it’s just me. I can hang out with friends and have a conversation about some stuff and that might eventually lead to a tune or whatever. Ultimately, I would like it to be an elastic enough concept to take whatever input I can put into it.
HEAVEmedia: Even taking an opinion of someone and putting in a certain part or taking something out sort of eliminates the whole solo project singer/songwriter stuff in it’s truest, simplest sense.
Jim Fairchild: Yeah, exactly. That is the way I feel about it. A lot of people feel much differently about it. I, more than ever, value the idea of community. And I should clarify, I don’t want to be the center of it. I would just like to be a facilitator in a larger conversation. Whether it’s in the band making songs or an album or the people listening to it. I just hope people can gather around and find some joy and emotion in it and find something that makes them want to be a part of it.
HEAVEmedia: On a semi different subject – you’ve been part of quite a bit of album releases, which means you’ve been a part of a bunch of different album reviews. What stock do you put in album reviews?
Jim Fairchild: I guess I’ve always felt that same way about that. If you are going to take in the bad stuff then you are going to have to take the bad stuff, too – and that is a pretty slippery slope. You either have to dive into it or shut it off. It’s really easy to concentrate on the positive stuff that people say, but if people are being critical they might have some constructive criticism for you. Maybe that’s something you are or are not ready to hear, but you better make sure you know where you stand with that before you hear criticism.
HEAVEmedia: Ever read one and be like, “What the hell are they talking about?”
Jim Fairchild: There were some of them in both Grandaddy and All Smiles. I try not to put them in my memory. I would swell over them for a couple of days, though. There have been positive ones where we were like, “Whoa. This is so different than what we had imagined this being.”
HEAVEmedia: Did they say you recorded the new Abbey Road or something?
Jim Fairchild: We had a ton of weird stuff for The Sophtware Slump. Some reviews said it was the American OK Computer. I would say at least five or ten said that. Maybe that is me retroactively stroking our ego, but I was like, “Man – I don’t know about that.” If you integrate that shit into your mind then you are sett ing yourself up for a steep fall when the next one doesn’t live up to that.
HEAVEmedia: Twenty years ago someone tells you you’ll be in the position you are in now. What do you say to them?
Jim Fairchild: Fuck yeah I will be! (laughs) Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been really fortunate in my life. There is a lot of stuff that if I think about in the wrong context could really fuck me up. There is a lot of things in my life that I think of that way. Let’s look at the fortunate things. I was in Grandaddy and that’s a really incredible band with a great songwriter with a great collection of dudes commonly supporting this vision that Jason had. That is really hard to find, and I’ve discovered that more and more. A lot of people, and maybe even Jason sometimes, try to portray Grandaddy as this one dude and these other stranglers he hung out with. The thing that I’ve really discovered having been away from that situation and watching Modest Mouse is that the thing called chemistry is super fucking real. Incredibly real. If you are lucky and you have it then you should try to hold on to it. The chemistry between Eric and Isaac and Jeremiah is fascinating.
I got to play with Grandaddy for a long time. I’ve been hanging out with the Modest Mouse dudes off and on for four years and I really think that they are one of the best bands in the world, and whether I play with them for just the rest of this year or more on and off again is okay with me. Like right now I’m playing shit that Johnny Marr wrote.
I guess you just got to try and work hard to get better and better about what you are passionate about in life. What I’m passionate about is making music and playing guitar. Those are all still mysterious and rewarding endeavors for me, and I’ve been rewarded for taking that seriously. At 35 years old I still want to work harder to continue to be good at that. I hope that I can continue.
HEAVEmedia: Okay, you can erase one song from history and rewrite it yourself. What is that song?
Jim Fairchild: Oh, shit. Is that in a positive way or a negative way?
HEAVEmedia: Positive. You get credit for writing said song.
Jim Fairchild: My favorite song ever written is “Happiness” by Elliott Smith. I’d probably take that one. That is the song I’ve probably listened to the most out of any song ever, even more than “Search and Destroy” or “Everything Turns Grey” by Agent Orange. I’d have to take “Happiness,” but damn it “Search and Destroy” would have been a cool one to write. I mean if you can open a song and say, “I’m a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm,” and have people believe that then you are doing something right. But if you try to dissect that and think of that rationally then you are like, “What the fuck? Come on, dude.”
I can only pick one. I guess it’s “Happiness,” but the others are pretty awesome.
HEAVEmedia: Fine, you can make an album.
Jim Fairchild: Oh shit. I might have to think about that one. “Grass” by Animal Collective would be in there. “Crazy On You” by Heart. The Second Movement of Beethoven’s Seventh would be in there. “Mother and Child Reunion” by Paul Simon would be in there. Paul Simon might actually get two. “Homeward Bound” is fucking great. “My Little Town” by Paul Simon. God damn it, he has written some bangers. “The Takeover” by Jay-Z. That’s a long EP. I’ll settle for that.
Posted by Wes Soltis on Jul 23, 2009 @ 9:00 am
