Ever reliable veterans Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw generously help us explore their work together and apart over the last few decades
Since discovering the mighty Come belatedly in the Boston-birthed band’s formidable four-album life-cycle, around the release of 1998’s somewhat ironically titled swansong Gently Down the Stream, the intertwined and separate career produce of co-leaders Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw has been a steady but varied part of this music lover’s diet ever since. This has involved looking back as much as keeping track of the ceaseless forward-in-all-directions travel of two durable and dexterous talents.
In Zedek’s case, this has meant delving into formative time spent with short-lived jangle-pop ensemble Dangerous Birds, criminally overlooked avant-noise explorers Uzi and no-wave outfit Live Skull as well as staying abreast of her stirring solo output, ensemble releases with the Thalia Zedek Band, the brainiac post-punk trio E, the leftfield sound adventures of tK and innumerable other projects.
In respect to Brokaw, his even lengthier CV is impossible to comprehensively detail here. With a proper professional start in slow-core pioneers Codeine that overlapped with the beginnings of Come, since the turn of the millennium his body of creative output has been vast and his gainful employment wide-ranging. Apart from a stack of solo records that have swung between plugged and unplugged songs-based material, divergent instrumental explorations and film soundtracks, Brokaw has been a pivotal player within Pullman, Consonant, The New Year, Dirt Music, Martha’s Vineyard Ferries, Charnel Ground and in a duo with Karate’s Geoff Farina as well as trusted hired sideman to Steve Wynn, Evan Dando, Thurston Moore and countless others.
Having individually interviewed Zedek and Brokaw face-to-face in the distant past, the moment felt right to properly interrogate them again – but this time together in one virtual space. Not least because the pair have been back into closer connection of late, to assemble and celebrate a satisfyingly expanded new edition of Come’s 1994 album, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (just out on Fire Records) and for Zedek to be a stellar guest vocalist on Brokaw’s redemptive return-to-‘rock band’-mode long-player Puritan (released at the start of this year on 12XU).
On top of all that, through the last eighteen or so pandemic-clouded months, Zedek has – amongst other things – delivered E’s feverishly prophetic Complications LP, a vinyl reissue of her still-imposing 2001 debut solo album Been Here and Gone (via Thrill Jockey) and most recently the latest full-length set from the Thalia Zedek Band, in the shape of the potent Perfect Vision (also on Thrill Jockey). Moreover, aside from the self-billed Puritan, the ever-prolific Brokaw has slipped out a handful of digital-only releases on Bandcamp (including Fecund in the Flood, Live at the Lost Church and an awesome half-hour long wordless cover of “Heaven” by The Rolling Stones) and reappeared as one-third of Martha’s Vineyard Ferries with the punchy Suns Out Guns Out on Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Without further scene-setting, this is what the two good-natured and unassuming musical titans had to say about their past, present and future endeavours – together and apart.
As musicians who have both been regularly touring for decades, did the last eighteen months or so without playing live shows make for quite a dramatic change to your existence? Loss of income and trying to dodge disease aside, did the period at least allow you to pause, recharge and take stock of things?
Thalia: I spent time improving my digital home recording skills, which had been something that I had been meaning to do for a while. Since in my case I was starting from practically zero it mainly involved learning to use Garageband – ha ha! I collaborated on three or four recordings with various musicians and spent some time making really good demos of new songs for the new Thalia Zedek Band record, Perfect Vision, since we couldn’t rehearse in person for about a year. I also collaboratively and remotely wrote a six-song EP with my band E, which we recorded in person this past summer when travel was again possible. It should come out in 2022. I also did some Zoom and Facebook concerts and began giving guitar lessons, all of which were firsts for me.
Chris: It was a pretty dramatic change for me. All horror related to the pandemic aside, it was in many ways positive for me and came at a good time in my life. I was really burnt out on touring and travelling; I didn’t realize how much so. This was the longest I’d [not] been anywhere since about 1990 and I really liked it. My home life is good and I just dug in here. I switched to teaching guitar, drums and bass, primarily online, and have really enjoyed it. My songwriting basically stopped, and I didn’t miss it or really worry about it (I’ve just started writing again recently and am psyched about it). I performed some [gigs] outdoors, and I did a lot of online shows, mostly on Facebook, and those were really helpful to me, to keep me engaged and remind me of who I am and what I do (yes, it was a surreal time for me, like everyone). I was very fortunate, I didn’t lose anyone to the plague, I didn’t get sick, my circumstances were okay.
Was organising the reissue of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell one of your ‘stay-at-home’ pandemic projects or has it been in the pipeline for some time? Did it prove to be a challenge sorting out the recording rights, accessing master tapes and the like to put it out via Fire Records, given that it was originally released by Matador and Beggars Banquet?
Thalia: It had been in the pipeline for a while, and it was a challenge sorting out the rights, but the whole process was probably made easier by the pandemic since we were all home and able to Skype. Normally, communication between the four of us [from the original Come line-up] would have been much slower, given that me and Chris both tour frequently and Sean works in film. One snag was that the copyright office closed down during the pandemic, which made transferring rights a real pain in the neck and ultimately more expensive since eventually we had to pay to expedite the process.
Chris: The lockdown definitely helped us organise the reissues. I’m not sure I can describe this well but the time at home also offered me some new perspective on the Come legacy, in ways that were helpful.
One of the sleeve essays in this expanded edition makes much of the two-year gap between 1992’s Eleven: Eleven and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Did it actually feel like a long stretch at the time, given how much touring I believe you would have undertaken in that era? Were most of the songs written across that time between and pre-tested on stage?
Thalia: It didn’t feel that long to me, but we were definitely ready to write new songs after touring for so long on our first album. We were mostly opening up for larger bands on our early tours and were not given the luxury of long soundchecks to work out new material. We were lucky to get twenty minutes. But we would definitely work on new songs in between tours.
Chris: It felt like we were incredibly busy that whole time between 1992 and 1994. I mean, nowadays two years goes by much more quickly, but I think that’s typical of being older. We did take a couple of months off from touring to work on new songs, and it felt very concentrated. Writing, and especially recording that album was hard, the hardest record I’ve been involved with. Worth it, but a lot of work.
Chris’s own sleeve notes refer to the darkness and pressure around the run-up to recording the album that fed into its mood, that included touring with Nirvana just before the death of Kurt Cobain and the corporate label feeding frenzy for noisy guitar bands that you swerved away from in favour of remaining with indie labels. In this context, what do you think might have happened had you succumbed to signing with a major label?
Thalia: I have a hard time imagining that actually. The indie labels that we were signed to, Matador and Placebo, which was a subsidiary of Beggars Banquet, were large enough for us I think, and capable of growing the band. Most of our peers that signed to majors had pretty soul crushing experiences, though of course there were exceptions.
Chris: I think if we’d signed to a major it would have been a disaster and we probably wouldn’t have made four albums, much less ones we’re all proud of. I think we made the right choices with the labels we went with.
What else bled into the atmosphere and dynamics when it came to recording Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Did you have any clear ideas of how you wanted things to sound overall? Was it hard sustaining the cohesion from recording it – I believe – in several different studios?
Thalia: It was hard to sustain the cohesion, at least for me. There were so many unforeseeable delays and conditions to adapt to. What we imagined to be a week recording in one studio and perhaps three or four more days of mixing turned into recording in three different studios over a matter of months and mixing in a fourth studio with a new engineer/producer.
Chris: I think we had a lot of focus. Some elements that I thought would be cohesive, like using Carl Plaster and Mike McMackin recording and mixing together, weren’t cohesive at all; but I think our own singleness of purpose kept it on track.
The most rocking moments, which make up the bulk of the album are amongst your gnarliest and the chosen singles “String” and “Wrong Side” were and still are far from being commercial radio friendly numbers. Was there a deliberate attempt to recoil from being the ‘Next Big Thing’ as suggested in the sleeve notes or was it more to do with what just came organically as a band?
Thalia: It was definitely organic, not recoiling. But once we decided to stay on an indie label, we definitely did not feel any pressure to commercialize our sound.
Chris: We wrote everything really intuitively. We had no interest in trying to follow the market or anything like that. The only thing I felt changing, specifically, was moving towards writing some out and out rockers like “In/Out”, which I think was a response to playing so many slower songs on tour for months. That’s the only deliberate veering I can think of, or recall.
To me, it’s the two most subtle yet epic tracks – namely the middle-eastern vibes-tinged “German Song” and the contrarily-titled closer “Arrive” that are the true high watermarks of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. What influenced those two pieces lyrically and musically? Do you feel you were sowing the seeds for subsequently released songs such as “Sloe Eyed” on Near Life Experience and “Saints Around My Neck” on Gently Down the Stream with those two?
Thalia: Lyrically I think the influences were distance and longing in both songs. Musically we were trying to really give ourselves room to do whatever ideas came to us and to not try to stay in a particular genre. We were really into surprising ourselves and being open to all ideas.
Chris: I wrote the main parts to “German Song” very late one night on an out-of-tune guitar that I nudged into an open G minor tuning. I used the same tuning on “Shoot Me First” and those are the only ‘alternate tunings’ we used at all, besides being in E flat for the duration of the band’s existence. “German Song” felt both personal and kind of mystical, and I think meant different things to different people in the band. “Arrive” I think we only played live a few times; it had a hushed delicacy that wasn’t easy to turn to live. I’m glad we went for that at all.
What specifically inspired the lyrics on “German Song”?
Thalia: The lyrics were inspired by my girlfriend/lover at the time. We had been together for four years or so at that point and made it through some pretty dark times together. They were pretty much sung directly to her.
How did you write and arrange material as a group at this point in Come’s life cycle? How democratic was it?
Thalia: We would all jam together, but I would say most of the songs would be built around guitar riffs that either me or Chris came up with. We would tape our rehearsals and then listen back and pull out the ideas that we liked and work on shaping them into songs. If all four of us felt good about the song it would become part of the repertoire but we all had to agree on it.
Chris: Thalia and I wrote stuff together, and individually; and we came up with stuff in jam sessions with the whole band. It operated that way the whole time we four were together. It felt democratic and we shared the songwriting credit equally.
What contributed to Sean O’Brien and Arthur Johnson quitting Come after Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and did you nearly contemplate calling an end to the group when they did?
Thalia: It was so surprising to me and Chris that we honestly didn’t even consider ending the group. I know that I definitely felt that the band wasn’t done yet and that we had more to say. We were starting to begin work on our third record and I had been looking forward to it. I think that Arthur and Sean both had different reasons for wanting to leave. In Sean’s case he has told me now that he had been playing music for most of his life and just wanted to do something new. He now works in film. For Arthur, it might have been a bit more complicated, but remember at the time Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was released it wasn’t particularly well received, especially in comparison to Eleven: Eleven and there had been struggles/issues with our European label and our management, so we were dealing with some difficult stuff.
Chris: I think there was a lot of pressure on the band. It was hard to make a living or balance being in a band with having another job. We were successful, but not quite successful enough to make a living at it for four people. Honestly, you’d have to ask those guys, though. Thalia and I were really taken aback when they quit; and we had no interest in stopping.
The bonus rarities disc, entitled Wrong Sides, has a lot of interesting and quality stuff on it; including your early Sub Pop EP left-off the Eleven: Eleven reissue from a few years back, a sublime demo version of “German Song”, a cover of X’s “Adult Books”, The Birthday Party-slanted “Who Jumped in My Grave?” and the great lost compilation track “Cimarron”. Were you pleasantly surprised at what you dug up and how it all stands up together now?
Thalia: Yes, I was. Come always enjoyed doing covers and we released quite a few limited-edition EPs and singles in between the full lengths which were was really nice to be able to present in a new and more cohesive format.
Chris: I love all the extras. I really loved all our songs, they’re all dear to me in different ways! I’m glad that “Adult Books” finally came out, that was fun and I think kind of reveals a side of us our friends knew about but maybe others didn’t.
Was there much else left behind, like the live Gun Club covers that recently appeared as a 7” on Chunklet Industries?
Thalia: Not very much really, but I always think that and then we discover new things!
Chris: We weren’t overly prolific; I think everything we did is accounted for….
What can you tell me about further Come archival plans beyond this reissue? I understand there’s a Peel sessions collection due next year on Fire. Will expanded editions of Near Life Experience and Gently Down the Stream follow after that?
Chris: Near Life Experience and Gently will follow. There should be a few bonus tracks with Near Life but I don’t think there’s really any extras for Gently, but who knows what might emerge. I was pleasantly surprised revisiting the Peel Sessions. The sessions themselves weren’t fun and I didn’t like the recordings at the time, but the new mastering of them really helped, almost transformed them for me. They also include a very early song called “Clockface” that we abandoned, and the recording is fantastic, really heavy. I’m glad it survived!
Are you looking forward to playing reunion shows to commemorate the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell reissue in November? Will it have been a long time since you’ve played songs from it? Will Sean and Arthur be part of the line-up?
Thalia: Yes, I’m definitely looking forward to it. Chris, Arthur, Sean and I did some gigs in 2019, so we’re not too rusty, I hope! It will be the original line-up of Chris, Arthur, Sean and I doing the NYC shows and hopefully some more shows in Europe and the US in 2022.
Chris: Yeah, I’m psyched to play with them. Really psyched to revisit some songs we haven’t played since 1995. I love playing with this line-up, it always feels really powerful and special.
Do you think the fact that you only released four albums in Come’s original active lifespan has helped cement the band’s positive reputation and enabled you both to sustain a creative relationship over the last twenty or so years?
Thalia: I’m not sure, it’s hard to say. We definitely didn’t want to ever make music that we couldn’t be proud of and we were pretty tough self-critics. I’m very happy with all of the LPs, EPs, 45s that we made and I’m proud of us for having high standards for ourselves.
Chris: I had a conversation with someone some years ago where they argued that the average lifespan of a good band was either four or five albums. I’m not sure that that’s entirely true but there are some patterns to that idea. I don’t know, I feel like we did a lot. It feels complete to me. Gently felt like a good one to end on; for many years it was my favourite Come album, though not my favourite line-up…. that would be the one with Arthur and Sean. Some of my favourite bands (Velvet Underground, Stooges, Gun Club) it’s four or five albums…and with The Ramones the first four are perfect and it goes downhill after that. So, there you go. I don’t know. I’m good with what we did.
Thalia, you’ve had a quite a busy couple of years for releases new and retrospective in various guises, with E’s Complications LP and your new Thalia Zedek Band album Perfect Vision as well as a vinyl reissue of your first solo LP Been Here and Gone and some rarities from your stint in Live Skull resurfacing as half of the Dangerous Visions compilation – all on top of the current Come reissue. Has it been satisfying to have more or less the full spectrum of your work given some well-curated exposure?
Thalia: Yes, it definitely feels good! Been Here and Gone had been out of print for some time and had only ever been released as a CD. It was a very special record and recording to me, as it was the first time that I had gone out completely on my own and the collaboration of the people involved in the recording all coming together to support my vision made it even more so. It was recorded onto tape in an old church by Bryce Goggin, a very talented engineer and producer, and I always felt that it’s natural format should be vinyl, but when it was originally released in 2001, vinyl was considered to be a relic. I had been trying to get it reissued for a few years, but this time the idea clicked with Bettina at Thrill Jockey, perhaps because of the twentieth anniversary angle.
The Come reissues feel very gratifying as well. In terms of reissues, I think it’s just a good feeling to know that the work is still available and part of the current musical melange. The Live Skull stuff was crazy to hear. It was actually the first time that I had heard the Peel Sessions, as the band broke up later that year after finishing back-to-back US and European tours. It was amazing to hear how fierce and focused we were during those sessions.
In terms of E’s Complications, were you taken aback by how prescient its lyrical themes and febrile disposition were as coronavirus spread the globe and as America’s political climate overheated, coupled with the album’s vinyl pressing being disrupted and the supporting tour cancelled?
Thalia: It was a crazy coincidence for sure. We had noticed that a lot of the songs had medical themes for some reason, so we just decided to go with the idea in terms of the cover art and title. The music and artwork were all finished in late-2019, well before the pandemic had taken hold. But “Contagion Model” was definitely eerily predictive of what was to come. Our record label Silver Rocket, likes to joke that all of the problems we had with the production of our record is because we called it Complications.
As well as the material that reappeared on the Live Skull release, do you hope the other albums you made with the band will eventually get reissued?
Thalia: I believe that Mark C. is working on that. Some of the early albums were reissued on the French label Desire, but I believe that they are now sold out and the label has gone out of business.
How different and challenging was it recording Perfect Vision compared to other Thalia Zedek Band LPs? It appears that due to the pandemic you spent longer doing preparatory demos and some contributors recorded parts remotely. Despite whatever complexities you encountered, it feels remarkably unified with warm yet potent qualities…
Thalia: It was really different in that the band hadn’t actually played together in about a year when we finally went into the studio. For the first part of the pandemic getting together to even rehearse seemed too dangerous. So, I focused on improving my home recording skills and tried to get as much remote work done with the band as I could. About a month before we went into the studio in December 2020, me and Winston Braman (bass) and Gavin McCarthy rehearsed once a week. I think it was around four or five rehearsals [in] total. Then we went into Machines and Magnets and tracked the basic tracks for all ten songs in one day. We were in one big room together and when we went into the control room with Seth Manchester, we would all put on our masks. I came back on my own a few more times to do vocals and guitar overdubs, and Mel Lederman came in right before mixing to record the piano on “Binoculars” on a really nice grand piano that they had in the studio.
Besides that, everything was done remotely, except when I returned to do the final mix with Seth on January 6th. About halfway through the session Seth checked his phone on a break and we found out the US Capitol was under siege by insurrectionists! Not knowing how that would turn out inspired us to get back to work and quickly finish mixing! But I think credit is really due to Seth for making the record sound so organic, he is amazingly talented.
My favourite songs are “Queasy” and “From the Fire”. The former feels like one of the most Come-like tracks you’ve cut in a while and the latter really has a rousing carnivalesque swing with Brian Carpenter’s trumpet lines – what went into those two sonically and lyrically?
Thalia: “Queasy” was the oldest of the songs and we had already been playing it live before the lockdown and on the tour we did for Fighting Season in 2019. Sonically, I think it reflects Stooges/garage-punk influences and it’s pretty much straight up about Donald Trump and how fucking tired I was about waking up every day to his ridiculous tweets and rants.
“Fire” was also about Trump but by then we were also in the midst of the pandemic and the ship that we were on here in the US was being steered by a lunatic! There is a saying here “from the frying pan into the fire” and that’s kind of the position I felt the US was in. The music felt a bit Eastern European to me and my friend Brian Carpenter had a band called Beat Circus, that played in that style. I had been wanting to collaborate with Brian for a while. He’s a very interesting guy and a great musician. I asked which instrument he felt most comfortable with as he plays a few and he picked the trumpet.
How did the extraordinary ommetaphobia-provoking sleeve come together with your brother Dan?
Thalia: I took that photo at the Harvard University Museum of Natural History. It was in a glass case in the anthropology wing and I was just fascinated by it. I think it was in the Eugenics exhibit? When I finally decided to call the record Perfect Vision (in the US, perfect vision is referred to as being ‘20/20’, so there is some wordplay there that I now realize only makes sense to Americans) I tried to get back into the Museum to recreate the photo with a proper camera but they were closed for obvious reasons. My brother was able to make it work with my old cell phone photo. The back cover photo of me with my head in the mouth of a whale was a polaroid taken by Heather Kapplow on a roll of defective film.
Chris, as your first solo ‘rock band’ LP since 2012’s Gambler’s Ecstasy, Puritan was certainly worth the wait. Why did it take you so long to return to this mode? Was it down to your other workload and just holding-out for these types of songs to self-present themselves to you?
Chris: I’m not sure why it took so long to make another rock album, after Gambler’s Ecstasy. I was definitely busy with a bunch of other stuff in that time. It took a long time for me to get new music together with Dave Carlson and Pete Koeplin, the guys on Puritan. I wasn’t in a hurry, and I didn’t feel compelled to make an album until we really had it together. I think it was worth the wait, at least for my own part.
Puritan seems to channel the best of what you’ve done in this vein before as well as stretch into some fresh territories. In essence, it feels like a travelogue patchwork affair in a good way. Would you agree to some extent and where do you see that it fits into your broader solo canon?
Chris: I feel like it’s similar to Gambler’s Ecstasy in that they both feel a bit patchwork. Both albums were the result of slowly gathering songs over several years. That’s not a recurring motif I necessarily aimed for, but what I got.
“The Heart of Human Trafficking” is a colossal centrepiece track, what drove you there?
Chris: I was having a conversation with Bob Weston about Seattle, which I described as being the heart of human trafficking in North America (which it was when I lived there). He said, “God. ‘The Heart of Human Trafficking’, you should write a song called that”. And I said: “Okay, I will”. So, I had a certain map and template going in. I wrote the song here in Cambridge but I wanted it to have a kind of Pacific Northwest feel, even down to the kind of reverb and delay I seemed to hear all the time on KEXP when I lived there. I channelled a lot of anger into the song. But it’s also really fun to play. Initially it was twelve-fifteen minutes long, but we got it down to a little over seven. It was hard to know exactly where to place it, but in the middle of the album feels right.
Having three female guest singers (Tricia Adelmann, Claudia Groom and – of course – Thalia) sharing and even taking the frontline role certainly gives the record a special extra dimension. Was that a conscious design from the start or did it happen more by accident?
Chris: It was sort of a gradual decision. There were just three great singers and friends I’d been collaborating with, and I wanted them all on the record. I thought it would make the album better! They’re all so good. It feels great to have them with me on those songs.
The two stripped-down drums-free tracks with Thalia on Puritan are particularly stunning and make me wish for the less amplified record that you nearly made between Near Life Experience and Gently Down the Stream. Is there a possibility that you could still record a full album together one day in this kind of setting, perhaps as a duo?
Thalia: Actually, it’s a possibility that we have discussed and are interested in pursuing.
Chris: Thanks, I’m glad you like those recordings. I think future stuff like this could be possible? We’ve been doing some playing together recently, and trying out writing new music together. We haven’t written songs together in about 24 years, so… who knows?! It’s exciting. We’ll just have to see how it goes. It has been really fun to play on one another’s songs and records in the last couple of years; writing more together too could be great.
Besides everything we’ve already discussed so far – what else do you both have in the pipeline for the rest of this year and beyond?
Thalia: I’ve got tours in the States with Thalia Zedek Band, including a joint tour with Live Skull of the East Coast / Mid-west in December. Then Thalia Zedek Band will be touring Europe in Feb/March and E in May/June of 2022.
Chris: I have a solo tour in Italy in a couple of weeks, and a tour of France being booked for February. Geoff Farina and I have discussed doing a short tour next year in the US. Hopefully, Come will be doing dates next year. Charnel Ground have some recordings we did in 2019 that we want to finish. I’m going in the studio for two days next week with Mark Morgan (guitar) and Greg Kelley (trumpet), playing drums and bass. So – a few different things, but generally speaking staying at home and continuing to teach. I don’t feel like the world is anywhere near ‘back to normal’, so I’m still viewing it accordingly, and I guess getting back into it a little at a time.
Finally, one of your close contemporaries – Rick Rizzo of Eleventh Dream Day – recently said in a Concrete Islands interview that “We are in uncharted territory. The classic rockers and old punks are carrying on into their seventies. It’s time for the indie rockers to play into the sunset.” How much affinity do you share with that observation as veterans who still seem to have plenty left in the creative tank?
Thalia: It’s definitely true that a lot of us who came up in the 80s and 90s are still going strong. I’m not sure how to explain it except that maybe it means that we got into music for the right reasons, our vision and commitment was strong, and our hearts were in the right places.
Chris: I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next. I like to think it’s possible to keep making great music plus great songs as you get older, though that seems more rare with very popular artists. I’ve seen a lot of jazz, folk, blues, country and avant-garde players get even more interesting and gripping as they get older; with rock and punk it feels more unknown, to me anyway… I’d really like to see it, let’s put it that way. And I’d like to continue creating and participating.
Main image credit Greg Sullivan
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