How Many Songs Can Fit On a 90 Minute Tape?

Meeting up with Wolf Colonel: An interview with Jason Anderson By Lois Maffeo

Have you met Wolf Colonel? Is it one person or a band? Is it a collective, a commune, a way of life? Let's check in with Jason Anderson, the artist currently known as Wolf Colonel, to find out what the skinny is on his new album "Vikings of Mint"; who inspires his infectious pop meanderings; and what to do when your opening act is a guy in a hula skirt.

How long have you been writing music?

Well, I guess I really started doing it in 1996, the spring of 1996.

Had you been playing guitar all your life?  

I guess I started like a lot of music kids did. I started playing piano when I was about "this big". My parents put me through lessons. And then when I was in 8th grade, I decided, of course, that piano wasn't cool and that I wanted to play guitar. So I started playing guitar in 8th grade and drums in high school. I was in a bunch of terrible bands all through high school.   What were some of their names?   I don't knowÖ Don't worry, I'm not trying to elicit any scandal.   Well, then the Wolf Colonel stuff started happening in 1996. It's interesting - when I first met Calvin and Brian it was January of 1996. At that time the only band I was involved with was Yume Bitsu, who I played drums with for a long time. The Wolf Colonel stuff didn't really start happening until the fall of 1996 and then it just kinda went from there.

How did you meet Brian and Calvin?  

It was really cool. I was a freshman in college. Adam, who was the leader of Ume Bitsu and I became friends. He was a year ahead of me. And he went to high school with these girls Anitra and Marisa. And at that time Anitra was dating this guy Jeff Smith. So Adam brought me up to Olympia - it was the first time I'd ever been there. It was in early 1996, just after the Christmas break and I was a wide-eyed freshman from Lewis & Clark. He took me to a show of Unwound and Karp and it just really blew my head off. I was so excited. It just gave me a whole new way of looking at things. We stayed over at Jeff's house and ended up hanging out with his friend Brian all night. It was funny because I had seen Dub Narcotic play with Fugazi earlier that year. But I didn't know that Brian was that same guy. If someone would have told me who he was, I would have probably been a little more star struck. But I thought he was just some guy. We stayed up until about 4 am just laughing and joking and just really hit it off. We started talking on the phone over the next couple of months. He came down to Portland to see the Halo Benders play at Reed College and he brought Larry Butler and Jeff Smith. We saw the show and then Brian introduced me to Calvin after the show. Brian ended up recording the demos for some acoustic stuff I was working on at the time. And over the years I've gotten to know Calvin better.

So when Calvin recorded Wolf Colonel, it was just you. Is the band just you or is it a band?

It's just me. For such a long time Wolf Colonel was just me acoustically and it was really kinda punk performance art. I think that was what intrigued Calvin at first. It was just so fun and weird. I would just play shows at Lewis & Clark in the coffee house and put up posters for shows in my dorm room. People would come and I would play weird, long sets of about 80 songs. They were all about a minute long. Then I started making acoustic tapes. I did about 11 of those tapes - each arranged with about 20 - 40 songs on each tape. In the fall of '97, some of my friends started saying, "I'd love to hear some of this stuff electric." My friend Adam Forkner had this 8 track, so I went down in his basement and recorded six songs all by myself. I played the drums and did everything. It was really exciting and cool. And when I had finally put together an electric album, I brought it up to Calvin. I still hadn't played any electric shows. It was still just me. He was pretty excited and suggested we re-record some of the stuff. So at that point I figured that it was time to get a band together - a few of my friends to play with me. It's really fun and liberating in a certain way. For one, I come from a really wonderful group of friends whose musical incest sometimes rivals the Elephant 6 collective, I think. At any given time there will be 16 bands that are composed of the same 6 people. I hear stories of other bands who get in fights. But with Wolf it's easy because people just know that these are my songs and when it's time to practice I come in with 25 songs and say, "Let's just play 'em."

How did you choose the songs for Vikings of Mint?

It's kind of a clearing house for the big rock/pop anthems. It plays like what our live set was. We did three tours this year and that was pretty much our live set for two of those tours. So it was time to lay them down. I'm pretty happy with them.

Is your band still in school?

No we graduated last spring. We went on tour three times in 1999 and I'm really excited to do kind of a bigger tour. Our first tour was with Ume Bitsu and the others were by ourselves. Naturally, because no one has heard us outside of Portland, the shows have been very hit or miss. We've been able to play at better and better venues, though. On our last tour we played at this place, Gilman Street, in Berkeley and other places like that. It's really been hot and cold so far.

Any memorable shows?

We have so much fun when we're playing and one of the main purposes of the band is bringing back the fun to rock and roll and rock and roll shows - to take the pretension out of it. We've had a lot of great shows when we felt like we were really tapping into that unbridled spirit of rock and roll. It's really rewarding. I remember once that Calvin was telling me about his idea of playing shows in places like Chehalis, or just doing tours of small towns. We've had the most rewarding shows in places like that. It's so cool because they are always so surprising. We booked a show in Redding, California - which you wouldn't think of as a very hip place to play. It was gonna be in this guy's trailer and it was just a bunch of high school punks. So we showed up at four in the afternoon and there were, like, three kids sitting there. And by the time we played, this trailer was just packed with about 45 hot, sweaty kids from like, 8th grade to 11th grade, who were so into it. We've had a lot of shows like that. We played in this place, Orem, Utah. It's right outside of Provo. It was the same kind of fervor. And we played a show over in Ilwaco, Washington with Dennis Driscoll and it was just awesome. It reminded me of the comic strip Peanuts or something. These kids dancing aroundÖyou could tell it was really exciting for them.

Any disasters on tour?

We've had plenty of shows where there has only been one person there. Those don't have to be the worst shows because we always have fun. In Los Angeles we were playing at this place called Al's Bar, which is this punk dive in a really weird part of town. So we showed up, and unbeknownst to us, the show that we were playing was actually a local variety show. So there was a guy with a ukulele and a grass skirt telling really bad jokes. There were over-dramatic readings of plays and stand up comedy. We played last so only a handful of people played. It might have seemed like a disaster but we had a lot of fun. If we know a show is going to be really weird, we just try and do weird stuff to make it fun. At the show at Al's Bar we had a friend from L.A. sing all the songs instead of me. It was fun.

Who are some of your musical idols?

I'd say probably Paul McCartney. Musically and as an artist, I probably get the most inspiration out of him and the music he made. Idol is a pretty strong word, but pound for pound - bands that have really held up for me are The Smiths and Teenage Fanclub. They are the bands I really got into in high school. At the time I was listening to Guns & Roses, so it was really special to find them. And over the past two and half years, probably Guided By Voices. Old GBV or new GBV or does it matter to you? I guess that when all is said and done, I'll always like the old stuff better just because the four track stuff like Vampire On Titus has such a fragile warmth to it. You can never get that with cold, big studio, arena rock production. His [Robert Pollard's] songwriting has been really consistent, though. It's never let me down that much.

Have all these bands influenced Wolf Colonel?

The pop stuff has. I grew up as a pop kid listening to my parents' Beatles records all the time. It really set the tone for what would inspire me. I would say that definitely the pop, harmony, hook-based stuff has inspired me. I would love to say that Morrissey influenced me, but I can't do his stuff. What do you think about hooks? Are they composed or do they just pop into your head? When I write songs it's just a weird, spontaneous process. It just kinda happens. I have a big supply of melodies to work from, so I have a lot of good chord progressions to work with. I'm lucky I guess.

Thanks, Jay!    

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

FAVORITE GROUPS AND ALBUMS:

1. Teenage Fanclub: "A Catholic Education," "Bandwagonesque," "Thirteen," "Grand Prix"
2. Guided by Voices: "Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia," "Vampire on Titus," "Sunfish Holy Breakfast," "Under the Bushes, Under the Stars" (Robert Pollard) "Not In My Airforce"
3. The Smiths: "Louder Than Bombs," "Strangeways Here We Come"
4. The Beatles: "Help," "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," "White Album," "Magical Mystery Tour," "Abbey Road"
5. Bryan Adams: "Reckless"

TOP TEN SONGS OF EMOTIONAL TRIUMPH:

1. Queen w/ David Bowie "Under Pressure"
2. The Zombies "Care of Cell 44"
3. El Debarge "Who's Johnny"
4. Big Star "Ballad of El Goodoo"
5. Ween "Sarah"
6. Glass Tiger "Don't Forget Me When I'm Gone"
7. Eddie Money "Walk on Water"
8. Built to Spill "Shameful Dread"
9. Rasberries "Overnight Sensation"
10. Mister Mister "Kyrie"/Thin Lizzy "The Boys are Back in Town"