Time Spent Driving Interview with Jon Cattivera singer for the indie rock band. Interview July 18, 2015.
Time Spent Driving Interview
– What’s new in the world of Time Spent Driving?
Time Spent Driving – Mainly the fact that our new record is coming out 7/21 on Cardigan Records, so we’re pleased about that. We also went through a few line-up changes as we were reforming, but I’m happy to report that the new album features all three original core members, plus we have a permanent bass player and keyboard player at this point, making us a five piece. Sometimes we still play as a four piece though depending on the circumstances. We’re also looking forward to getting out and playing the new stuff live, and writing some more.
– How was it recording your album Passed & Presence?
It was cool—recording has always been one of my favorite things, but at the same time it’s stressful and you get harder on yourself as you’ve done in more and more. Believe it or not we finished it all up about a year ago. Leading up to that though, we had a couple false starts in the writing process, which contributed to it taking longer to get into the studio that we anticipated, but once we got our original drummer and guitar player back into the fold, everything came together super quickly, and we were in the studio within 2 months. At that point we chipped away at it in as big of chunks as we could, then mixed it separately at another studio. We had to go back a few times to get things dialed in right, and originally had 11 songs recorded but it ended up being so long we lopped a few off for the release.
– How do you build a song up from nothing to become something?
That’s a good question, and I don’t think there’s any one way to go about it. In the case of our new record, it’s definitely more all over the map than it’s been in the past because while the majority of it is newer material, there are songs on there that were conceptualized and reworked reaching as far back as 2002. That’s really the way I was approaching this album: filling the gaps from where we left off to where we are now, which is where the title came from. Historically there have been times when I’ve written everything from top to bottom with the exception of the drums, which involves recording rough rhythm tracks and structure, then layering things on top. With this record though, I think there was far more collaboration that in the past, which I think is a cool direction for us at this point. Dave and Kem added piano parts, Derek rewrote some guitar parts and added some cool new stuff, and Jonas added some new elements bass-wise that ties everything together. More than ever before I did a lot of writing on an acoustic, which is probably why we included a lot more acoustic elements on this album. Most of our old songs can’t really be played solo on an acoustic guitar because the guitar parts don’t have a progression throughout, but on this album, the majority of them could be.
– When writing a song, is there such a thing as investing too much time? What’s the shortest time you ever took to write one? What was your strangest inspiration?
I’d say so – it starts to suck the soul out of it if you overthink it. However, there are certain songs that have complexities in the orchestration that take time to work out. “Applelike” from our new record was like that—it took a lot of tweaking and trying things to get right because it’s got some weird timing and structure, and it’s purposely long. While few and far between, I’ve definitely written songs under under an hour before, and those are often the best and most heartfelt. They just pour straight out and often for good reason. Inspiration-wise, I’ve gone to some dark places in recent years because that’s just where I’ve been at. When playing in Gentlemen of Japan I wrote a song called “Death Chair” which was inspired by the concept of working yourself to death, and there’s a line in there inspired by the movie “Kill Bill” where Uma Thurman is paralyzed in a back of a car or something and trying to wiggle her big toe: “Drain every ounce of strength, on a wiggled toe.” (Everyone should check out that album by the way!) I’m sure there are more as well.
– Vinyl is making a comeback. Do you have a personal preference? Is your band producing on vinyl?
You know, when I was first getting into music it was all about cassette tapes. I had tons of them and would make mix tapes all the time for my friends. Then it was the golden age of CDs and I had tons. I had some vinyl as well but I didn’t get into as much as a lot of people. At this point, I’ve fully given into digital because I can get it or listen to it anytime or anywhere. It’s nice not having to rely on a record store who would never have what you want, but always offer to “special order it”. I do love the idea of vinyl though because I miss opening up the artwork and reading the lyrics and liner notes while taking a first listen to an album. I have to imagine that kids that were never exposed to that are missing something as it pertains to the listening experience. We would love to rerelease “Just Enough Bright” and “Walls Between Us” on vinyl because they are completely out of print. We were going to try to release “Passed & Presence” on vinyl, but it was just way too long to fit it—we would have had to do a double album!
– Do you have any tours this summer?
No we’re just trying to put together some shows. If a tour becomes an option we’d love to do it, but we’d definitely at the very least like to do a couple extended weekend stints before the end of the year, maybe a week. We’ll see.
– How is the music scene in your area these days? Are clubs still popular?
Santa Cruz, where we are from is a small town of about 60,000 people, so there aren’t many clubs, and it does seem difficult to get people out to smaller shows. It does seem like there’s a lot more going on in San Francisco though than there used to be, a lot more places to play and clubs seem more willing to put together smaller shows on a regular basis. I used to want to go to shows to see and find out about new bands, now kids can just go check it out online, so I think the popularity of going out to see a show with bands you’ve never heard has definitely lost popularity. Every once in a while you get lucky though—I was at a random show in Seattle one time and saw this band called Siberian. They were awesome and I would have never heard of them otherwise. I think kids are missing out on that happening as much these days.
– Could you describe some of your earliest influences in life and in music?
Skateboarding was a huge influence on me, and pretty much all I did until I started playing guitar. It got me into music. I used to hold a boombox up to the tv to record the songs in skateboard videos. Musically some my first influences were Black Flag, Descendents, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Social Distortion and Bad Religion, which led me to bands like Samiam, Jawbreaker, Seaweed, etc. Also our guitar player Derek’s brother is in Good Riddance, and I think they were a huge influence on both our earlier punk rock bands and thinking we could play in a band at all in the first place!
– Without social media could bands today manage to survive?
I think it depends on exactly what you mean by that. Bands and music will always survive in one way or another. If you’re speaking financially, I really have no idea how any of them could make a living at it. It’s got to be one of the hardest things to do. I can’t say for sure, but it just seems like there are exponentially more bands than there used to be, and so much noise to dig through to find the good ones.
– In your opinion, which album would be essential to have if someone were stranded on a deserted island?
While that’s nearly impossible, I think if there was a double live album that included both Descendents “Hallraker” and “Liveage”, I’d die happy enough.
– Any words of wisdom to share with aspiring artists?
Time Spent Driving – Play what comes out, and as much as you can, when you can.
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