Calla - On a collision course

I meet Wayne B. Magruder and Peter Gannon on a late winter afternoon. Between cheese sandwiches and assorted chocolates, we start our chat by sharing our food allergies and intolerances.

Is there anything you'd rather I didn't ask you?

Peter: Where the name comes from.

Wayne: You know, we don't have an answer. Just that.

I seem disappointed. Peter and Wayne laugh.

(still laughing): Now you see her crossing off all her questions!

No, I wasn't planning to ask that, but I admit the calla lily has always been my favorite flower.

Wayne: Ours too. We love the flower, we love how the name looks written down and…

It's an easy name to remember.

Wayne: Yeah. And then it means different things to different people.

Peter: Over the years it's taken on more meaning. At first it wasn't exactly…

Peter and Wayne start smiling again: they're finally getting around to answering the question…

Wayne: There it is, I knew it!

With “Collisions” you took a new direction: you seem more oriented towards the classic “song” form instead of the atmospheres we were used to.

Wayne: If you look back and listen to all four of our records in a row, you'll notice an obvious evolution towards song form. A lot of it is because Aurelio, when we started out, wasn't a singer, which is why you had those whispered vocals always sitting in the background: he didn't know how to sing and was very insecure about it.

With every record we've played live, Aurelio has grown more and more confident, his vocal lines keep improving, and now we've got the voice up front. The voice becomes more and more present from record to record, and for this album we wanted to build on that by focusing on songwriting. We didn't want to wear ourselves out chasing ideas similar to what we'd already done, so for this record we wanted to try something new.

A lot of people don't like it when a band changes. With every new record, we hear from people who are disappointed by the change in our sound, by the fact that there's something new, but if we worried about what people think, we wouldn't even make our first record again: there's always something different. We always try to do something new, and we do it for ourselves.

I think one of the things present on this record that wasn't there on the previous one is a greater sense of frustration and a bit more anger. It's something we wanted to express, like the difficulties we had making this record, and it's something that comes through in the songs.

It's something we wanted to draw on, something we wanted to do that we'd never done before: pushing ourselves to write these shorter, more “pop” songs was actually really hard.

So it's true what people say: for you this was a troubled record.

Peter: Once the recording sessions started, it wasn't that hard: everything became more fun. Around that time we couldn't get the money together to record the album, so in the end we were forced to score a film in exchange for the use of a studio belonging to the film's production company. We basically financed the record ourselves, with poor management, and the whole thing took us a year.

Then Sean (Donovan, the former bassist, ed.) left the band on the first day in the studio.

A frustrating year that finally came together in a single week.

When all this happened, we had to step back from the project: all three of us were very unsure about what we were about to do. For a moment we even thought about changing our name or scrapping everything altogether, and we were asking ourselves whether any of it made sense anymore. By the end of that week, after a lot of discussion, we realized we still had the same passion for music and for what we were doing, and that going on under the name "Calla" still made sense. Once we'd decided that, we recorded the album, sent it out, found new management, ended up with a new label, and the lineup is solid.

Right now we're very happy, but "Collisions" was definitely a shooting star in an already critical period.

Did signing with a new label cause you any problems, though? Did you feel any pressure?

Peter: Absolutely not. They bought the record when it was already finished.

Wayne: We'd already finished it, and we brought it to them saying we wanted to release it. There was no pressure from anyone.

The only pressure we felt was the pressure we put on ourselves.

Why "Collisions"? What's colliding?

Peter: A combination of factors. It also has a broader context: it wasn't just about us and our financial problems, there are other meanings too.

Wayne: ...our conflicts with the market (smiles), personal conflicts, not necessarily among the three of us, but definitely with management.

It can be read in so many different ways... just like the titles of our other albums, really.

Peter: It was a frustrating period, and yet the album is full of hope, positive aspects, encouragement, and a touch of humor.

It was frustrating, but the themes overall are also very positive.

Definitely less so with "Collisions", but Calla have always paid close attention to "sound": every time you listen to a Calla song, you're bound to hear something new. Isn't it exhausting to think about every tiny effect in every single song on every record?

Wayne: That's what I call the "fun part" of making a song.

Peter: Instead of piano, for instance, you can use computer-sampled sounds, synthesizers and plenty more. All of that is part of the Calla sound. It also helps us get a better sense of how a song is coming together and move forward more spontaneously, even when we haven't rehearsed much.

Wayne: Maybe we do it too often (laughs). I think that sometimes we pay too much attention to detail. It's just how we work, and we like it that way.

Peter: You can tear a song apart, listen through the different passages, maybe catch an effect once and only realize what it actually is three passes later.

Wayne: Some songs can disorient the listener. If you fall asleep during one track, the next one might wake you up.

Peter: We've been touring for years, and at every show we end up explaining our sound to people: "When you hear this, when you hear that... it's not your kitchen about to explode"...

Wayne: We're always explaining to people that it's all intentional, that there's nothing to worry about.

Wayne, do you still personally run the band's official website?

Wayne: Not anymore. Our site is now handled by someone else, a friend of ours. We follow it and update it as a band, and we'd like there to be more stuff online, like a message board or something along those lines.

Calla moved to New York many years before the city got all the attention it's getting now. What were you looking for in New York back then, and how has the alternative scene changed over these last few years?

Wayne: We all grew up in Texas and started playing together, forming a band called "Crappy Press". It was me, Peter and Aurelio, and we moved to New York basically because it was a great place to find out whether we had what it took for a career in music, or whether I should go back to school or take a safer path. The best way to find out was to go straight to the source: if you can make it in New York, you know you're a real band, and that you'll be a real band anywhere else too.

We also considered California at one point, but moving to New York felt like the right choice to all of us.

Peter: New York has always been the cultural hub of the United States. It's always at the center of attention for something. If it's not rock music, it's art, poetry, jazz... it's always been a Mecca, a mandatory stop for every artist.

How has the New York rock scene changed in recent years?

Peter: New bands keep coming out of there, there are always plenty of artists at work. Definitely in recent years the scene has literally exploded, and some bands have raised the bar in terms of quality: people like Strokes, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Now there are tons of young people moving to New York, following in the footsteps of these bands.

It's changed a lot since we moved there.

Just as Calla has developed, things have changed, but Calla hasn't changed in the same way, we never followed trends. We don't tend to be influenced by what's going on around us. We were here before all this attention, and we hope to still be here once it fades away.

The release of “Custom” has always intrigued me. How did you decide to put out a remix album, and why did you release it right after “Scavengers”?

Wayne: It all started with a couple of friends who wanted to remix some of our songs. The idea was for a 12” containing three or four remixes, one of which was meant to be a slightly different version of “Fear Of Fireflies”. Their idea was something aimed at clubs. That's where it all began, and the CD was the label's idea: we had four remixes, and they'd been approached by other people interested in getting involved in the project.

It's always really interesting to hear your own songs reinterpreted.

I don't know what our fans' reaction was. I know some people don't like the idea of songs being reinterpreted.

What about you? Are you happy with the record?

Wayne: Actually, there are some remixes that didn't “make the cut” that I would have preferred to have on the record, but they were too experimental.

I hoped I was wrong about it at the time, but now I wish the tracks that make up the record were more “noisy”, more ambient and “extreme”.

Is it true you signed a contract before you'd ever played a live show?

Peter: Yes, Calla recorded and released the record before ever playing a single concert.

Wayne: Me, Aurelio and Sean recorded a demo with some songs we were working on that we'd recorded at home just for fun. We wanted to do something very different from what we'd done before with other bands. We sent it around and waited for feedback. Actually, we only got one response out of about a hundred demos sent out: it was from the Belgian label Sub Rosa, who wanted to release the record. We asked if we should re-record it, and they told us it wasn't necessary, that they liked the sound it already had. They just needed a few more tracks to fill out the CD. That's how it went. We gave them some more songs and the record came out. It was only afterwards that we realized that, at some point, we'd probably have to play a show, so we started thinking about how to play live.

It's the reverse of the path other bands take: rehearse, play clubs, sign a contract, and make a record. For us it was the exact opposite. We really had to figure out how to play live.

I think that explains the evolution of our records, which has only now led us to write a record like “Collisions”, a record made to be played live. It's a natural evolution to step out of the studio and play more and more shows, and go on longer and longer tours, and the tour for “Televise” lasted more than a year. You learn a lot, you learn from how people react to a song, that something doesn't quite work live, or that other things actually come out even better. You also know going in that you'll have to play these songs live, and you start writing differently, both consciously and unconsciously.

Even the remix album, in this progression, makes sense: it's a gradual growth.

You know, at this point we're a live band, and we have been for years now, not just a studio band anymore.

For shows we prepare sampled sounds, especially for the electronic parts. The next record might end up being a completely electronic record… (whispers, smiling) a techno record (we laugh). We don't know yet, but it'll obviously be different, just like all our other records are different from one another.

(Milan, December 1, 2005)

Many thanks to my very wonderful Friend Francis Reilly who helped me on spooky words, weird idioms and broad accent.

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