Portland psych scene pro Dewey Mahood takes us on a bespoke tour of his bounteous back catalogue with Plankton Wat, Eternal Tapestry and more

As a veteran of the Portland, Oregon underground scene since the 1990s, Dewey Mahood has been an almost indecently fecund populator of his Discogs profile. Although stints in a bewildering array of outfits – with often equally bewildering names – such as Elephant Factory, Edibles, Gärden Söund, Scuffle & Dustcough, Spectrum Control, Terrane and Galaxy Research have scattered a hefty trail of releases collectively, Mahood remains best known for his time as a member of still-mysterious psych-rock titans Eternal Tapestry and his for de facto solo project Plankton Wat.

It’s under the latter umbrella that Mahood released one of his finest works to date earlier this year – in the shape of the formidable Future Times on Thrill Jockey. An eclectic soulful psych odyssey subtly refracted through the prism of Portland’s microcosmic pandemical and environmental geopolitics, the album refines much of its creator’s sonic palette to date but also forges a new found sense of purpose and a broader vision.

The moment therefore seemed ripe to reel in Mahood via email to decode some of the enigmas embedded in his career up until this point; centred around nine of the most substantial extracts from his sprawling canon. A process which he embraced with engaging exuberance…

How did it all begin for you as a music-lover and then as a creator? 

I’ve always really loved music for as long as I can remember, one of my earliest childhood memories is listening to my parents’ The Who records and jumping off our living room couch. My mom had an acoustic guitar and I would strum on that. I originally wanted to play drums so I entered the band class at my middle school. I was given a soft rubber practice pad and drum sticks. That wasn’t at all what I had in mind, so after a lot of begging my mom got me an electric bass and small amp. I’ve been a stringed instrument player ever since.

How pivotal was moving to Portland in your career?

That’s an interesting question, and hard to answer. I’d already played bass and guitar in several bands in my hometown of Chico, CA for a few years, and people definitely knew me as a musician there. I’d played a lot of shows opening for well-known touring bands, and a regular on the house party scene. Most of my older friends moved to San Francisco, and if I had moved there, I would have been playing in bands a lot sooner. I would have been a lot better connected. But I always end up making the strange choice! Ha ha. So, I moved to Portland, and in the 1990s if you hadn’t grown up there you didn’t really fit in. It took several years to get my first Portland band going, and this was with two other friends who had moved up from Chico. We were called Elephant Factory, and did spend a bunch of years playing around town and the North West. I was finally known as a person who plays music!

What led you into co-founding Eternal Tapestry?

I was working at a local record store, Music Millennium, and meeting younger kids who had recently moved to Portland. All of the sudden I was in the middle of all this excitement and youthful energy. I kind of singled in on this guy Nick Bindeman who played guitar in a really crazy no wave band called Hustler White. I was at a house party they were playing, and their drummer Meghan (who went on to U.S. Girls) got up from her drum kit. Nick put his guitar down, walked over to the drums, and played this insane Keith Moon style drum solo. Later that night I asked him if he’d like to jam. We played pretty much weekly for the next ten years!

Eternal Tapestry – Palace of the Night Skies (Three Lobed Recordings, 2009)

Palace of the Night Skies was the fifth Eternal Tapestry album – according to Discogs that is. It was also your first and only record on the much-revered Three Lobed Recordings, after initial outings on Not Not Fun, your own Solar Commune label and elsewhere. Three Lobed have notably hosted Bardo Pond occasionally over the years. In terms of shared tastes, operational arrangements and label-hopping moves, would you consider Bardo Pond an influence or at least kindred spirits?

Oh yeah, we all really dig Bardo Pond! I’ve seen them a few times over the years, it’s such an immersive experience. That’s definitely something we tried to do with Eternal Tapestry. It was all about getting lost in a big overpowering sound. Making truly hallucinogenic music. We also recorded a side for the Three Lobed box set, along with Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls, and several other great bands. I was very excited to work with the label, it was such a perfect home for the band. We most likely would have kept working with them, but Thrill Jockey came along, and that was an even bigger honour.

In terms of its sonic direction, Palace of the Night Skies feels like the pinnacle of Eternal Tapestry’s earliest phase – much like The Invisible Landscape released in the same year – where you seemed to find a sweet spot between visceral White Light / White Heat chug and churning psych-rock, especially on the opening “Prism Light Traveler”. How much would you agree?

Absolutely. Jed [Bindeman] and I agree, and Nick might, that 2009 was our best year as a band. We did an incredible West Coast tour with U.S. Girls (back when it was just Meghan and her reel-to-reel tape deck), and played some of our very best gigs. As soon as we got back to Portland, we recorded all the improv jams we had been doing live. The result of those recordings were the two records Invisible Landscape and Palace of the Night Skies. Those records still kind of blow me away in that Nick, Jed, and I would just jam like that for hours on end. There aren’t any overdubs or editing or anything. It’s just live improvisation recorded on a four-track cassette deck. It’s kind of magical.

Eternal Tapestry – Beyond the 4th Door (Thrill Jockey, 2011)

This was the band’s debut on Thrill Jockey and the first to garner wider global exposure, did you feel under some healthy pressure to shift your sound and refine your focus, to include some shorter and more varied pieces? Did drawing in extra instrumentation like synths and sax help steer its trajectories?

Well, the band changed pretty quickly in a short period of time. We added two new players, Ryan Carlile on synth and tenor sax, and Krag Likins on bass. This mellowed out our sound a lot. We couldn’t rock as hard and fast as we could as a trio, so the music took on a much spacier, trippier sound. We kind of went from being a High Rise influenced band to a Pink Floyd influenced band. It did make us slightly more user friendly! Ha ha. The record does include two of my best riffs I brought to the band [on] “Cosmic Manhunt” and “Galactic Derelict”. Side A was kind of my side, and Side B more the direction Nick wanted to go in.

Besides the broader context surrounding the album, what else do you think went into the melting pot on Beyond the 4th Door? Was it inspired by more cosmically-inclined psychedelia and 70s German bands like Popol Vuh, Amon Düül II and Ash Ra Tempel?

Hmmm, well I think it really came down to our personalities and how we interacted musically. The five of us are all pretty low key and mellow people, and that kind of increased when we played together. I come from more of a punk rock background, and could easily push Nick and Jed into playing more aggressive[ly]. We even covered Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown” with Nick singing the lyrics for a while. But with five chill dudes the music stayed pretty calm. Probably the biggest turning point around 2010 was Jed and I both became obsessed with Träd, Gräs Och Stenar. Our talk went from Boredoms, High Rise, Blue Cheer and other gonzo psych rock, to only listening to Träd, Gräs all the time. Our music got real chill real fast. Every time we got together it would be like “Mors Mors is such a great record!”

Would it be fair to assume that the members of Eternal Tapestry during your time were bonded over some pretty big and diverse record collections, as well as a mutual love of Pink Floyd between Saucerful of Secrets and Meddle?

Ha ha, yeah it would be fair to assume that! Nick, Jed, and I all have that in common. Actually, we are all second-generation record collector nerds. When I was growing up my dad’s record collection literally filled our entire living room. The first time Etap toured the East Coast we stayed at the Bindeman family home, and their dad’s record collection filled their entire basement. It was one of those light bulb moments for me, “oh so this is why we understand each other so much!!!” In regards to Pink Floyd, if you don’t like them do you even like music? Ha ha.

Eternal Tapestry & Sun Araw – Night Gallery (Thrill Jockey, 2011)

How was this collaboration with Sun Araw instigated? Were you fans of Cameron’s work beforehand?

Oh yeah, we have been friends with Cameron [Stallones] since about 2006. He was doing a band called Magic Lantern that was similar to Etap, and we both released cassettes on Not Not Fun about the same time. We went down to LA and played shows with them several times. We are definitely kindred spirits. We were all in Austin, Texas playing shows for SXSW Fest and had an afternoon off. A guy who worked at the local radio station invited us to play live on air, and Cameron got asked to join us. It was recorded, and when Thrill Jockey heard about the recording asked if they could release it. I like that one a lot, from a technical standpoint it’s our most hi-fi recording.

Was it entirely the product of an improvised jam session?

Yes, we played live on air for about forty minutes straight. The record is exactly what we played. No overdubs or editing. That is maybe the real beautiful thing about Eternal Tapestry music, everything you hear is just what we played in the moment. Nothing was ever laboured over. There are a lot of technical mistakes, awkward moments, things that just don’t really work, but we never tried to hide it. I always thought of us as a jazz band in that sense. Whatever we played is what we shared with the world.

Eternal Tapestry – A World Out of Time (Thrill Jockey, 2012)

This is probably the most diverse and frenetic of Eternal Tapestry albums that you were involved in. It starts off almost funky and ends up with a balmy acid-folk coda, with some pretty clanging and skronking moments in between. What do you think fed into its general gestation?

This is our record I’m most proud of, and the one I most fought for my vision of the band. Personally, I was a little disappointed with the music we gave to Thrill Jockey up to this point. It was a different sound than what I wanted the band to be like. At the time I felt like Nick’s ideas were a bigger influence on the five-piece band, and my ideas were kind of being ignored. I felt like The Invisible Landscape was our finest moment, and I wanted to make a record like that one, but better. In the end I got my way after a lot of weird and not too fun practices. The mood of the band was changing, it was more of a struggle. I pushed hard to make a more diverse and interesting record that pulled in more of our influences. I think in the back of my mind the thought was “I might not be doing this too much longer, I got to make something I’m proud of”.

A World Out of Time was also your last ‘official’ album with the group, why did you opt to leave soon after?

Well, like I was just saying a lot of the joy had left the band. Nick and Jed had been my best friends and constant companions for eight years, we always had so much fun together, but the vibe started changing. Nick and Jed argued a lot because they are brothers, and over time it wore on me. By around 2013, I’d get home from band practice, and I’d be so depressed. My wife said “why are you doing this to yourself, the band isn’t making you happy”. One day I said “you’re right” and just quit.

Are you still in touch with your former bandmates and are they still actually in operation?

Oh yeah! I actually just had a great hang out with Nick and Jed last weekend. I was playing a music fest and they came out to see me. Man, it was great to hang with those dudes. I always felt like I was their older brother, the one who is all grown up and more detached from the other two. I don’t think they have played together in about five years. Nick and I get together occasionally and jam in his basement, and Jed and I often talk about playing. I have hopes that we reform for our twenty-year anniversary.

Plankton Wat – Spirits (Thrill Jockey, 2012)

This was your inaugural appearance on Thrill Jockey under your Plankton Wat guise, which actually began before Eternal Tapestry and had previously released material across an even lower-key spread of micro-labels, mainly on very limited cassettes and CD-Rs. How differently have you approached composing for both enterprises? Has Plankton Wat always been considered predominately as a more solitary home recording venture?

Plankton Wat is me experimenting and trying different things with guitar and other instruments. Basically, how I’ve spent a huge amount of my time since I was a teenager. I never wanted to be a solo artist, I love playing in bands and the friendships that come with it. In the 1990s my uncle gave me a Teac reel to reel four-track and my friend, and Elephant Factory bandmate, Larry Crane used it to start his recording studio Jackpot. A bunch of cool stuff like early Elliott Smith, and Pavement demos were recorded on that machine. Larry got big in the indie rock recording world, and built a real studio, and gave me my tape deck back. I spent much of 2001 teaching myself how to multitrack on it, and made my first solo record The Interstellar Sounds of Plankton Wat. I kind of fell in love with the process, and have been doing it ever since.

Where did you actually take the unusual name of Plankton Wat from?

Ha ha!! I never intended to have a career as Plankton Wat, but twenty years later here I am. It’s pretty silly, but I guess that fits me okay. Well, that first record was just an experiment, and I made 100 copies on CD-R to give to friends and family. I did not think of it as an ongoing thing. I’m a massive Krautrock fan, and the Minutemen is probably my all-time favourite band so I made up a fictional alias based on those two things. I morphed the names Conny Plank and Mike Watt. It’s weird, I know. 

Internally, Spirits matches the somewhat desolate mood conjured by its front cover; leaning into John Fahey acoustic meditations, ragas and expansive trippy desert-rock, according to these ears at any rate. What do you think informed the directions of the LP?

Oh, a million things really. You nailed a few of them. A lot of Plankton Wat music is Brian Eno and Sandy Bull at the core. Both solo artists who multitrack and build their ideas into more symphonic type mood pieces. I typically record late at night on headphones, so there is often a sleepy end of the day feel. I try to capture a kind of dream state where my body and mind are transitioning from wakefulness to sleep.

Plankton Wat – Hidden Path (Sky Lantern Records, 2017)

This veers through Fripp & Eno-like moments, mystic folk-blues and a partial return to the heavier elements of early Eternal Tapestry. What headspace were in you for this one?

I really like this one a lot. At this point I was kind of in between bands, and very focused on Plankton Wat. I wanted it to be more collaborative and have a band feel. It’s got a lot of friends playing on it, with most of the songs recorded live as a duo or trio. It’s definitely a standout in the Plankton Wat catalogue.

Hidden Path currently only exists on a very long-gone cassette and to stream-only on Bandcamp (unless you’re willing to pay €1,000 for the download!). Is there any chance it might be given a reissue along with other hard-to-find Plankton Wat off-piste releases, as downloads on Bandcamp or in some other accessible forms?

Thanks for asking! It is currently scheduled for a reissue on Thrill Jockey coming out in 2022. I’m super excited about this. The music will be remastered, and should sound amazing. I’m really happy this one will be reaching more ears. I think the music deserves that. As far as the rest of my back catalogue goes, I do think about it from time to time. I don’t think there is much demand for it though, and typically I prefer to always move forward and create new music.

Does it bother you that there is a small mountain of rare releases out there from Eternal Tapestry and Plankton Wat in the world, that even the most dedicated Discogs foraging well-off fan might never hope to acquire or does all just add it to the mosaic of mysteries around both ventures?

Yeah, I don’t mind that there is a ton of releases on Discogs. There are about twenty more albums I’ve released that aren’t even on there. I’ve made at least one album a year for thirty years so there is a lot out there. Most are very obscure tapes and CD-Rs. Often, I prefer that to 1000 copies of a vinyl record someone has to try to make their money back on. It’s cool to just keep cranking out art. I’m inspired by Sun Ra, and folk outsider artists. People who are driven to create and express themselves.

Galaxy Research – Kaldi EP (self-released, 2018)

This is the second digital-only affair from your promising self-declared DIY prog band. Are there likely to be more things to follow?

I hope so. Galaxy Research began as a collaboration between myself and a fantastic Portland drummer named TJ Thompson. We were really on a roll before the pandemic, playing a bunch of super killer gigs the last few years, and writing some really strong material. There is a killer live gig on YouTube of us playing a club called the Liquor Store, we were opening for the latest version of Träd, Gräs Och Stenar that night. Sadly, the pandemic has really slowed down the music scene, and musicians desire to rehearse. Without an upcoming gig it’s easy to spend your time doing other things.

Do you think that vintage prog has now fully lost its punk-imposed stigmas?

Ha ha, funny question! Well, I think all that stuff is so far in the past very few people care about that. The thing I dig about younger people is they all grew up with the internet and YouTube. Most people nowadays have at least spent a couple minutes checking out various music from the past, and I think a lot of it is all the same to them. Just things people used to do. Punk, prog, classic rock, grunge, it’s all the same, basically white guys who play guitar. Ha ha.

Plankton Wat – The Healing Earth (self-released, 2019)

The Healing Earth features some of your most warming home-spun and pastoral wares, amongst a few more out-there experiments. What fed into the overall mood behind it?

This is another good one I might try to reissue at some point. It’s unique for Plankton Wat as I recorded it all in two days. Basically, spent a snowing weekend sitting in my basement and just really brainstormed on it. I think as a result it is the most cohesive and least schizophrenic Plankton Wat album. It certainly is my most relaxed and natural playing. No one had asked me to make a recording, I just did it for fun, and to share for free with friends. There was zero pressure to impress anyone, or sell records, or get good reviews or any of that.

Plankton Wat – Future Times (Thrill Jockey, 2021)

Are you pleased at the reception to Future Times and how it seems to have struck such a zeitgeist chord with the last eighteen or so months of political, pandemical and ecological tumult, both in your locale of Portland and beyond?

Yeah, definitely! A lot of old friends, and people I admire from all times throughout my life have been so positive about the record, it really feels good. It seems to connect with people a lot more than most things I’ve done. I made it as a personal response to what we’ve all been living through these past couple years, and I think it has helped other people deal with their own feelings which is really cool. It was meant to be a therapeutic set of songs. I wanted it to be an emotional listen, both cathartic and with a sense of inner peace, and I feel like a lot of people relate to that. Maybe even needed art that represents both sides of the emotional spectrum.

Compared to most other Plankton Wat things I’ve heard, this feels like the most sculpted and sequenced collection that you’ve put out to date, flowing fluidly from the dystopic to the optimistic. At what point in its construction, did you set out to create or concede to a more structured and thematic approach? 

Well, the first song I recorded was the title track “Future Times”. I started with the two main bass riffs, and started layering from there. The guitar solo was the last thing I played on that song, and listening back I was kind of overpowered by the overall emotional feel. That was when I knew I should keep recording more songs. I had a few old songs and ideas I play often – “Nightfall”, “Modern Ruins”, “Wind Mountain” – and decided to get good takes of those. I also did several free improvisational pieces which became “The Burning World”, “Sanctuary”, “Defund the Police”. As I listened back to all this, I knew a good album was forming. I spent a couple months on it, slowly putting ideas to tape, and experimenting a lot in the studio. I handed it off to a couple good friends who I really trust, Dustin Dybvig and Victor Nash, and they were both very supportive and encouraging which helped my confidence in the project a lot.

Conceptualism aside, do you think that Future Times also stands up as a cohesive cumulation of what you’ve been seeking to explore as Plankton Wat over the years?

I think it represents where I’m currently at as a musician and songwriter. The beauty of Plankton Wat is it’s my own personal art project where I can do whatever I want, so it gives me a ton of freedom to just try stuff. Sometimes I’ll have a new keyboard, or drum machine, or effects pedal, or something and I’ll just explore what kind of sounds I can get from the tools I’m using. The unifying quality through all of it is I try to make music that is melodic and emotionally engaging.

How did the compositional and recording processes work in contrast to previous Plankton Wat output? It seems that it was actually your most collaborative Plankton Wat outing despite the Covid-necessitated separations…

Yeah, and that was on purpose. After I made my initial recordings for the nine songs playing guitars, bass, and keyboards, I wanted it to be collaborative. I wanted it to be like a band project rather than a solo project. Me and all my friends were mostly all quarantining at home for most of 2020, so this album was a way of working with friends via email. Dustin Dybvig has been my go-to musical partner for over a decade now, so naturally I called upon him and his wife Ash. Victor Nash is a guy Galaxy Research had worked with, and I really like his sensibility so I wanted him onboard too. Victor really pulled all my ideas together and made the record what it is. If I had done it all myself it would have been a lot more intense, noisy, and abrasive. Victor smoothed out the edges and made it more cohesive and listenable, and I thank him for that.

As well as returning to some familiar strengths, the album also lets in some different sounds into the mix. For instance, I can hear shades of In a Silent Way-era Miles Davis and Tangerine Dream on “Defund the Police”, some shamanic funk shapes on “Teenage Daydream” and some soul inflections on “Wind Mountain”. Did you accidentally or deliberately expand your palette this time around?

Hmmm, well since I spent more time working on this set of songs I think that allowed time for more influences to creep in. It’s interesting you mention Miles Davis because his 1970s music was definitely on my mind on a few of the songs. That and Pink Floyd were kind of the germ for the song “Future Times”, and it all just grew from there. I’d been listening to a lot of black American music, funk and hip-hop, going to Black Lives Matter protests, so that vibe was on my mind. I was very much wanting to make music that was more rhythmic than what I normally do with Plankton Wat. It’s an interesting challenge when you don’t use drums. Typically, I go for a free-floating type of feeling that begins with spacey guitar or synth, but on this album the bass leads almost all the songs. 

Is Plankton Wat likely to remain your primary vehicle for the time being and are you already working on more new material and plans to tour?

Well, Plankton Wat will always remain in my life at this point. I’ve tried to leave it behind a couple of times, but it always comes back. I really enjoy working on music in my free time, and when the inspiration hits me. I really don’t see any reason to stop. I’d like to do some touring but who knows when that will be a reality. I’d mostly want to play in Europe, and I don’t think they are even letting Americans in at this point. I’d like to play more with my Galaxy Research buddies, and there is always the possibility that Eternal Tapestry could resurface.

Do you have any other projects in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

Currently, I’m the bass player for Rose City Band which is my friend Ripley Johnson’s latest project. Ripley is kind of famous for Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, and this new band is a real killer! My buddy Dustin plays drums, so it’s a ton of fun, and we have this bad ass pedal steel player named Barry Walker Jr. Ripley is writing some great kind of classic rock type songs that we can go in a lot of directions with. It’s a total blast rocking out with friends again.

Adrian
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