FREE BLOOD
The SiS Interview by Jose Fritz
Photos by Jason Frank Rothenberg

Interviewing is like fording a muddy stream. We critics prepare, make assumptions and assessments regarding depth, current, and direction because we cannot actually see the bottom. I typically over-prepare and find myself anticlimactically splashing across a shallow, fast-moving puddle. This time I stepped out and was up to my neck.

At the end I still don’t know what’s at the river bottom. John's music knowledge is canonical, his responses long and well-thought-out. Madeline used the words “eloquent” and “gritty” to describe him. He responds to everything in terms of music, and Madeline, everything in terms of people. At the end I think I know more about them, and the band itself from what Madeline said. John is intellectual and abstract. She connects more; she laughed and was irresistibly charming.

In the middle of the interview I heard a whistle, and a gentle clank of the kettle on the stove. Madeline was sick, but keeping her appointment. While I interrogated, she made tea, and tried very hard not to cough. Dedication to any idea comes in both large and small gestures. But it’s somewhat mysterious too. We can always count on Jose Fritz to address the elephant in the room. How does a fashion designer end up in a band with John Pugh from Chk chk chk?

JF: How did you meet up with John?

MD: It sort of boils down to us meeting each other through Black Dice. A bunch of RISD people lived in this old auto body garage including some members of Black Dice. I moved in after school and John had known them from touring in California. I’m sure they crashed at his place in Sacramento and whatnot. It’s a big place with lots of people revolving through. We’d run into each other at parties and say hey lets play some music together then we’d go dance and forget about it. It took us almost a year of that until we really started really working on stuff.

JF: How do you connect up with Madeline Davy? Where does she fit into this project?

JP: We both have a love of dance music, but also I think it’s a love of highly experimental music and noise. We both are naturally attracted to nose that has rhythm; if that makes sense. It’s an unconscious attraction that you have for things. Things that push the boundaries that somehow rein it in, rhythm gives noise simplicity —four walls in a way. I’m all for sprawling art style, noise for miles. But as far as the things we make, I think that we always fall into a rhythm and repetition. It’s part of our DNA in some way. We just vibe on that; thrive on it.

In hearing the song “Quick and Painful” I made some assumptions. The song ends with grunting and amatory screaming. If I heard it through the wall of a hotel room I’d bang on the wall and turn up the TV. We know how they met, but what’s the extent of the relationship. Jose is a brutally blunt man, and an inconsiderate lout, but a fool he is not. Let us approach that topic sideways like a Fiddler Crab and ease into it with Madeline. She’s ill, fuzzy headed, her defenses are down. We seek only to glimpse the truth from the corners of our eyes. Under the ruse of a fashionista we make the first furtive glances.

JF: How does a fashion designer end up in indie rock?

MD: Yeah, It’s interesting. I actually started around 2003 I started designing clothes, making music. I just sort of left my day job to focus on creative things. I don’t know. It’s never seems that strange. It totally evolved in this natural way. It’s the same thing with the clothing design. We just started sewing out of her house and then it evolved into a company. I guess that’s how I do things.

JF: Does that mean you get to tell John what to wear?

MD: No, that’s pointless he’s a very fashionable dude.

JF: I assumed you dressed him in the morning.

MD: (giggles) No. He is perfectly capable of dressing himself. He has a good collection of T-shirts. It’s interesting, he’s capable of being very shabby in an interesting way and he can also dress up and wear skinny jeans.

JF: Before free Blood what were you doing, musically?

MD: Free Blood is really my first band. I worked on projects with friends I never played out. John and I were friends and we kept talking about it. He wanted to start a solo project and kept talking about it. We finally made good and started working in the studio and practicing and all that; then started playing out. As far as that goes, yeah I have a fine arts background and fashion design background. I have always been into music but this is sort of a new thing for me, although we’ve been doing Free Blood for 5 years now.

JF: In that entire time his wife never stood up and said “Hey I’m not comfortable with you hanging out with that hot clothing designer all the time!”

MD: (giggles) No, we’re friends, and I was friends with John and then I was friends with Liz before they knew each other. So we’re all good. We have a fun traveling, he has a stepson and sometimes we all travel together and its not the rock star situation. We come home from the gig and watch cable and order room service its fun.

There’s no gossip to be had. It’s all so wholesome, like the Partridge family. Mission failed, we return to a more proper arena. The easiest topic with John is musical influences. It’s indirect and becomes a metaphor for everything else. Free Blood may delve into Cowbells, break-beats, drum-line and bass-lines, but there is an undeniable connection to much older fare. When I ask John Pugh about musical influences he never mentions Chk chk chk. He goes straight for the shellac, to Louis Jordan, stops at John Fahey, turns left at Link Wray, then does laps around James Brown. The references are quick, far-reaching and would leave even the meta-snob Chuck Klosterman reeling, pawing at Wikipedia. Pugh can’t help himself. He’s a mad archivist, and music fiend.

JP: I go back all the way to the forties. When I was a kid my dad had this ridiculous collection of 78 records he’d inherited from a guy older than him. So these records were kind of fascinating run of records starting in the twenties and ending somewhere after WWII. All my parents listened to was classical music. So I didn’t really grow up hearing rock n roll like a lot of kids. Their parents were listening to whatever was on the radio in the 70s. For me the early Louis Jordan records, and Big Mama Thornton records those were the closest things to what I understood as rock n’ roll. I really got into that stuff.

The impression is immediate incongruity. From the outside, Free Blood seems a Forum non Conviens for a nostalgia playlist. The music feels young, riding the crest of an experimental edge in IDM. If he’d been rattling off the names of disco bands, I might have been les perturbed. But there is a reason for it.

JF: How does a punk rock kid from Little Rock end up a James Brown fan?

JP: We didn’t have a big scene like New York, or D.C. or San Francisco. We listened to Link Wray. We listened to Stevie Wonder. We listened to Black Flag. We listened to Black Sabbath. To us it’s all good. It’s all great music as long as it has passion. At the same time, I realize now that there was a period in the 90s where I kind of fell off the map as far as mainstream music went. I just got an Ipod last year. My wife gave it to me for Christmas. So I’ve been slowly catching up to the rest of the planet as far as digital music goes.

JF: Madeline, do you draw from those R&B influences at all?

MD: I grew up in Chicago and was listening to Jesus Lizard I don’t know how that plays into what I’m making now. There’s grittiness. My mom always listened to Motown and we always listened to Motown at home a lot. It may be more commercial stuff than John has delved into, but I’m interested —he’s the connoisseur.

JF: But what’s the bridge from Punk to James Brown?

JP: If you listen to Live at the Apollo, especially the second Live at the Apollo, it sounds like James Brown is pretty Punk before anyone even thought of Punk rock as a musical form. He always played the song three times faster than they were on a record. There’s always screaming and people with ecstatic energy which is what attracted me to punk. I had a mixed relationship with punk in the 80s. I was interested in the energy of it and the idea of the rock n’ roll vision that you the most freedom. But the evidence I had in front of me were jockish 80s hardcore bands. It’s too tough; I can’t take it seriously when it’s super-macho. Something happened in the 90s where punk opened itself up again. I kind of credit Fugazi. There is pre-Fugazi hardcore and post- Fugazi hardcore. They were kind of like hardcore for everybody else, everyone who wasn’t a frustrated jock. I think that got me more back into the idea of punk being a free medium: James Brown could be punk, Aretha Franklin could be punk, and John Fahey could be punk. All these unintentional punk groups out there, tapping into the energy instead of tapping into a specific style or genre.

In the face of this kind of breadth, Free Blood’s creative process becomes a black box. When they snap their fingers it could be an homage to some early thirties blues aphorism. When they Beatbox it might be inspired by Bobby McFerrin or it might be Pigmeat Markham or the Fat Boys. The Impressions and Jackie Wilson figure as prominently in their family tree as Zach Hill, and Bumps. But wasn’t punk rock built the same way the first time? It was a set of disparate artists with disparate influences trying to do something entirely new. The song you think you know is actually a compendium of everything that ever happened before it; like an audible history of man.

JF: Let me ask you about the early band. You actually quit Chk chk chk to focus on Free Blood. You were already doing this on the side then quit your day job basically.

JP: Because I was kind of tethered to my responsibilities with Chk chk chk, it got to the point where Free Blood had just recorded all these songs, we were putting out all these songs and I wanted to be there and give it my full focus. That’s what I’m doing now. It feels good. It feels like this is exactly what I should be doing at this point.

JF: It’s got to be difficult to do that balancing act.

JP: With Free Blood we had the side project syndrome; where it never quite took off, never quite got off the ground, never played outside New York. I felt like I had reached that point with Chk chk chk where I had done what I wanted to do with them. I remember years before when we were based in Sacramento touring the US. I was really asking myself, I feel like I’m committed to this but where it going for me? When do I get to a point where I’ve done what I need to do in the band? I thought about it and I want to travel the world see all these different places, play places, tour them, and make at least one really great album.

JF: Your first single was “Never hear surf music again.” Was that the first one you wrote or just the first one that was pressed on 12-inch?

MD: That wasn’t the first one we wrote. That one just seemed like it would be something a little more complicated and interesting to work with a producer and see what sounds they could help us with and make it really full. Actually, the first song that we wrote is going to be on the next round of singles that were’ doing. We never recorded it. So it’s not in order at all. I guess it’s in order of inspiration or just what made sense at the time. We were also performing that song then and it was fresh in our minds. So we decided to go in the studio with it.

JF: Your singles were put out on Rong music and the record on DFA. How did those deals come about?

MD: Rong is our label and DFA distributes. It’s sort of double billed because DFA is so well known. We contacted Rong and said you want to put this out? It’s been really great.

JF: You just cold called them?

MD: Pretty much. It required a little cajoling and all that. John is great for that stuff. He’s very persuasive.

JF: I’m imagining death threats when you say it like that.

At about 11:00, two hours after the interview, I hit rewind and flipped on the stereo and popped on an old Brunswick 45 of Jackie Wilson doing “I just cant’ help it.” While the drive wheel furiously pulls the Sony HF blank tape back to start, Wilson howls, and squeals sexual charisma and elation. Somewhere in the middle of side A the tape clicked. I missed it. My man Jackie kept wailing. Somewhere out there Free Blood are doing the same.