I’ve read that your life and music is really inspired by a trip you took to India about 14 years ago. Tell me more about that.
Well, I was chasing a girl! (laughs) She was not the best girlfriend ever. She did drag me to India. I was chasing her – she had gone already. We had broken up and then got back together and she said I should come see her. I went to India for what was supposed to be three weeks and it ended up being three months. It was the kinda thing that when you’re 12,000 miles away from home, pretty much everything takes on a brand new meaning. There’s no safety net. There’s nobody to talk to when you need help. It really is just you.
Where was home for you at that time?
I was living in New York City in Queens. To travel to India and leave my parents, I was pretty young. It was kinda crazy.
Had you ever been out of the country before?
Oh yeah. I actually chased this girl in a beeline across the Equator! I chased her to Maui, to Mexico City, to Miami, to Italy and finally to India. We were together for seven years. It was one of those rocky romances. It was one of those things where you learned an enormous amount about yourself. You didn’t have anything else to turn to. A lot of things went wrong while I was there. That was cool because it allowed me to surrender. I’m a control freak. When things go wrong, one right after another, sometimes you just have to let go. It was a major test being there by myself. I also got really physically sick. It was a very intense test. I came back feeling like I had faced myself and did pretty good. That was a great feeling. The great achievement of that trip was coming back and really knowing who I was.
How does that trip fit into what you’re doing now with Ra?
The oldest song on the record is “Superman.” I wrote that song literally four days after coming home from India. That song is about my ex and her battles with her religion. Once you’ve been to someplace like India and lived without a safety net you realize that’s what music is. It’s really about risk and surrender. If you can take a challenge of trying to do something musically and really face it and go for it, that’s the best way to live – with that fire and passion.
Especially after reading the lyrics to a song like “Superman,” one may think that Ra is a very spiritual band. Not religious, just very spiritual – there’s definitely a difference. Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?
I think the way that I like to describe it is: I accept religiousness but I don’t like religion. It’s almost like organized religion is taking one step forward and two steps back. In a lot of religions, in order to be “good” you have to be poor – I don’t know. I studied religions for nine years. Religion has always been an extension of the government. I just live with the idea that your personal spirituality is gonna take better care of you than any organized religion. That’s also completely subjective to who you are and where you’re coming from. I’m not judgmental, just very opinionated. I really don’t judge with my opinion.
I know what you mean. I saw a billboard at a church the other day that said “Being successful doesn’t get you into Heaven.” That just irritated me to no end. It’s like they don’t even want you to try and enjoy life.
That’s the duality, not to sound stupid, of messages like that. What they’re intending to say is life isn’t about being successful. The pursuit of success in this country is so overwhelmingly exaggerated that some people don’t live. They just strive for success. I can’t imagine that a person like Bill Gates actually lives because he’s so driven and his life is completely overwhelmed and swallowed by Microsoft. On the other hand, there is no reason why someone who is the richest man in the world can’t also be the most spiritual person in the world. A lot of religion doesn’t accept that as a responsibility. They don’t accept the fact that you can be a Buddha and also be Wayne Newton! They don’t want to look at that because you can’t control people if you tell them that. It’s very weird.
“Duality” is a word that fits Ra well for a lot of different reasons. I’ve read things you’ve said a few years ago and you were using “duality” heavily even then. Has that word always been a defining word with you for the band?
I imagine myself as a mutated Zen Buddhist guy. One of the beautiful things about that is the idea of positive and negative canceling each other out but still having potential. A lot of people think that when positive and negative cancel each other out that there is no energy released. If you look at physics, when matter and antimatter collide there is an enormous amount of energy that’s released. That’s kinda like the theory and the model that I’m trying to use for life. That middle road that we’re all trying to walk is not a middle road of peace and quiet and boredom. It’s a road of vitality and explosiveness. That’s where the duality is – to try and walk the line between those two halves. That’s where we as a band try to live. There is power and intensity but there is also beauty and softness. They work together to make one thing.
That’s a unique approach and it comes across in your music. There’s nobody else out there that comes close to sounding like you guys.
I’ve very anal about the way the band records. I recorded most of the record myself. I spent years and years in recording studios. I was aware of how to make a record that nobody else would be able to copy. That’s by using stuff that nobody else would use to make a record. We use gear that people have used but they don’t use them the way I use ‘em. Instead of mixing on a big console I mixed on a little 16-track tube mixer and did some really odd things that most people would think are crazy. If you trust yourself you can come up with something that sounds unique. The way the record sounds is really a reflection of that and the way I hear things. I hear things really weird.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the guy you’ve played with the longest – Skoota – isn’t in the band any longer. What happened?
It was a very long process getting this record out. Skoota recorded the record with us and then there was six or seven months where there was no clarity on if the record was coming out at all. Skoota is a session drummer and he had always made his living playing the drums. He had bought a house and he had some financial responsibilities and he got very nervous. When you’re sitting at home you’re not making any money. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He panicked and said he had to do this and had to do that – that’s what he did.
You guys had played together for almost 10 years.
Yeah, it was a very long time. He’s definitely someone that I grew to rely on. When it came time to find another drummer I almost thought it was an impossible task. The third guy we auditioned magically took the position and just stepped right in.
You mentioned the delay on the release of Duality. How long are we talking?
Belive it or not, the lead track “Fallen Angels” was handed in to Universal in April of 2004. That’s when the had the first single. Because we have a sound that’s a little different and not trying to be one way or the other, Universal had a hard time figuring out if we knew what we were doing. We went through this long discussion and didn’t know if we were gonna get dropped or what we were going to do. Finally, the reality was that we just went out and played a ton of shows and proved ourselves. It had been two years with no new record and no new radio song and we were selling venues out. The label was doing a double-take. It was a question of how and when the record was going to come out. We’re happy about when it came out. It actually came out on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year for the sunlight. It seemed like the right day for Ra to come out. We really don’t have any complaints. A few months ago we didn’t even know if we had a record deal. We really tried to be true to ourselves and we feel like we’ve accomplished that.
Since you mentioned that you’re particular in the studio, how long were you in pre-production?
I don’t believe in pre-production! There’s no such thing! Pre-productions works like this: A lot of bands go in the studio and do pre-production. Half the time, all the magic of the first few times they played the song is lost. In pre-production they recorded it in a four-track or something or they didn’t use the right mic or this or that and you can’t work that way. Usually your demos end up being better than the record. That happens so many times. Probably the most famous example where the demo ended up being better than the record is “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by the Police, which we cover on the new CD. That song is from a four-track recording that Sting did in a hotel room. He went in and re-recorded the entire song from scratch and it just didn’t have the magic. They took the four track and laid the drums and guitar on it and used it for the final version. If you listen to that one particular song, that’s why the vocals are – from a mix standpoint – further back than any other Police song that you’ll hear. They were trying to cover up the fact that it was recorded on a crappy four-track! Pre-production for us is making the record. I will write the song and record it and that point. It’s not in my interest to do demos. I will do a scratch demo to write a song but the demo version almost always ends up being in the final version.
From start to finish, how long were you in the studio?
Ten months. From October 2003. We recorded a lot of songs and have some extra stuff that’s gonna come out slowly.
It’s cool to see PJ in the band. I saw him years ago when he played in Trixter. What’s it like knowing that a guy from Trixter is in your band?
It’s funny. It’s a source of entertainment. It’s one of those things where, quite frankly, one of the reasons PJ was brought into the band. He was the first choice. The guy on the first album was not the first choice. I called PJ up and asked him to join. He was in another band and didn’t want to leave. When the first bass player left, PJ called in and joined up at the last minute. It worked out really great. He’s done this before and it wasn’t as much of a shock.
I appreciate you taking the time for this. Good luck with Duality and your tour. What would you like to say to the readers and your fans?
Whatever you do, when we come to town go see our show. We have so much fun at these shows you’ve really gotta come down. We really have a good time with it!
