Part 2 of Ken Shimamoto's exclusive chat
Part 2 of Ken Shimamoto's exclusive chat
K: What about Ledfoot, the project you and Joakim did where you played bass?
N: That was with Nicke, the drummer [better known in his later incarnation as Nicke Royale of the Hellacopters] and Ufe, the guitar player for Entombed. They were just, at that time, starting to get into punk and garage and regular rock'n'roll. I guess Nicke had been a huge Kiss fan before, but apart from that, they hadn't listened too much to that kind of thing. We just became good friends and started jamming for fun. We did a couple of shows and we did one studio recording, but only two of those songs have ever been released. One is a Husker Du cover which is on a very rare Swedish Husker Du tribute album," The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill", and then there's a song on a comp called "Swedish Sin"s from a couple of years ago.
K: Nicke's a great drummer; I heard his work on that Hydromatics album and he's got that Scott Asheton cymbal-and-snare thang down cold!
N: Yeah, he's an amazing drummer.
K: You said before that you've been writing more lately. How'd that come about? Is it because this lineup has been together so long?
N: Lately, we actually haven't written much at all. After the" Big Sound 2000" album, I don't think we've written one whole song. But I guess the thing is we've found it harder to find suitable covers, and Bjorne our bass player has suddenly become a pretty prolific songwriter, and also the band's been together for such a long time, so the songs usually (or sometimes, at least) grow out of jams in the rehearsal room.
K: One thing about your band that sets you apart from some of the other Scandinavian bands I've heard is that your rhythm section is so strong. It really makes a difference.
N: Yeah, they're excellent. It's really good for me and Hans to have a rhythm section like that to rely on.
K: Vinz from Holy Curse gave me a copy of the split single you did with those guys.
N: Ohhh, yeah, those guys!
K: He said to thank you very much for giving them the opportunity to make that record with the Nomads. He said if it wasn't for that, Holy Curse probably would not have had the opportunity to make their second album, Hereafter.
N: That's good for them. I'm really glad to hear that it made a difference. I was a little bit disappointed with the cover, but what the hell, it's great if it made a difference for them.
K: Do you guys feel as though you've been pretty influential on younger bands?
N: Yeah, well, that's what people say, at least. Both the Hellacopters and the Backyard Babies cite us as an influence, and it's really flattering that the Monomen, for example, say that we're an influence on them. It's just amazing, because I've never seen myself as a musician, really; I've always seen myself as just a music fan who has a band because it's a fun thing to do. We've never taken this that seriously.
K: What music have you been listening to lately?
N: All sorts of different things. Johnny Dowd has been a favorite recently. He's a guy in his 40s that has made two albums in the last couple of years. He's a furniture mover from New York, and he writes these amazing songs...very morbid, a lot of the time, all about booze and death. It's pretty amazing music. It's very cool. The last album sounds a little bit like Tom Waits, but it's very original in its own way. The first album is more like home recordings. Everything from 60s soul to some vintage 70es reggae. I'm a sucker for some of this reggae, actually.
K: I haven't heard any of that influence in your music yet. Do you think we will?
N: [Laughs]
K: I guess you need a different kind of rhythm section for that. What plans do you have after this tour is over?
N: We have an offer to make a new album, but as I said, we don't have any new songs, so we'll have to begin with writing them first. I don't know, I guess just make another album and see what happens after that. We're pretty happy with both the labels we're working with -- White Jazz in Europe and Estrus in the U.S. I think whatever we decide to do, things will stay pretty much the same. After being together for this long, I can't imagine us suddenly quitting. Now we're getting a little bit older; none of us would ever start a new band if the Nomads stopped playing. We would probably just quit playing at all. I guess, with things being like that, we'll just continue with the Nomads, because that way we'll continue playing music.
I spoke to Nick again on the rooftop of Club Clearview in Dallas following the Nomads' performance there on Saturday, 3/18/00.
N: This must be the nightspot area of Dallas.
K: Yes, they call it Deep Ellum. I was telling your wife, Dallas is a city that's very spread out, but all the clubs and entertainment are centered in a couple of areas -- this area, Greenville Avenue...kinda more upscale, yuppie type. For the young people, for cool people, this [Deep Ellum] is pretty much where it is. It's a sprawling Metromess...probably about the same size as Stockholm; a million and a half people.
N: This is bigger than Stockholm. Stockholm is almost a million, including suburbs.
K: Your wife told me Stockholm is also growing a lot, because all the jobs are there. N: All the people out in the different parts of the country get great educations, colleges give really great courses in IT, computer technology, and then they all move to Stockholm and get really well-paid jobs and buy all the nice parts of downtown and make the price of places to live just skyrocket. It's been ridiculous the last couple of years. We're looking for a new place, but I don't know what we're gonna do. It's getting too expensive.
K: You guys are from Skolna, right?
N: No, no; Skolna is the southern part of Sweden. We all grew up in Stockholm, in a suburb called Solna. For awhile, they called what we do the "Solna sound," because of all the other garage kind of bands coming from that area. "The originators of the Solna sound!" It's pretty stupid and ridiculous, because Solna is just a tiny suburb of Stockholm, but people pick up on things like that.
K: It seems like you guys can't play a bad show no matter what!
N: Oh, yes we can! We can be so awful you wouldn't believe it! We've been more consistent in the later part of our career. Back 10, 15 years ago, it was really up and down, from world-class to the lowest of the worst, from one night to another. Still, really a lot depends on what the circumstances are. We were really quite nervous and stressed out by the circumstances tonight. It was a really tense atmosphere down there when we arrived, and we could just feel that nobody really wanted us to be on the bill, even though Backyard Babies are old friends of ours; it was a very tense atmosphere. It was hard! I'm glad if it sounded okay at all, because we certainly didn't like it when we were onstage. We were just, "Let's get this over as quickly as possible!" We HATED it!
K: I would've hated to have been the Retardos, because they were there playing for four people when they started. I was talking to the guitar player, and he said, "This is the last date on the tour -- Monday, back to my dayjob" and I thought, "Daaamn!" That would be hard.
N: Those poor guys. They've opened up every night on this tour, apparently, so that must have been pretty rough, because it's always like that...people come late...
K: Listening to Joakim and Hans in particular, it seemed as though they had an edge tonight that they didn't the other times I've seen you this week.
N: It IS true that harder circumstances can actually make a show better, too, because if you're really edgy and nervous, it obviously makes you more tense, and you play with more energy and more attack, so sometimes these really hard circumstances can make a show better. K: The set you're playing is kind of a nice cross-section of the band's history.
N: Yeah, that's what we're trying to do; play a couple of new ones and the best of the earlier stuff.
K: I really enjoyed the set that you played at Casino El Camino.
N: Yeah, that was nice. That was a very relaxed, easy set.
K: Pretty good atmosphere in that place.
N: Very much so. We were treated like kings! It was great.
K: What was the high point of SXSW for you?
N: I would say that day at Casino, because we spent most of the day there. We arrived at 1 o'clock and we were there until 8 or so. They treated us to dinner and other things. It was just a really great day. Casino, this wonderful person, and Mike Miller who arranged the party is a great, great guy. Just a great atmosphere. So, as much as I liked the evening a
t Emo's, that got spoiled a little bit by this awful weather and everything, which made it a bit hard. It's all been good, but Casino was the high point. K: Dave Crider [Estrus Records boss], whom I hadn't met before, really seems to love the music and really seems to love his bands.
N: Yes, he's been very supportive of us, he's been saying things like, "You guys saved my life, you're my favorite band," which is great. That's extremely flattering to hear that from someone like Dave. He's got impeccable musical taste and he's a great guy. He's probably the person that's helped us out the most the last couple of years.
"I'm basically more a music fan than a musician myself... we take a lot of different influences and make something that is kind of personal"
K: This is really corny, but your command of English is very good; obviously better than my command of Swedish. Did you have to study it from when you're young?
N: Yeah, we start learning English from fourth grade. We get exposed to English everyday. Everything on TV is in English all the time. Sweden is not like many other parts of Europe where they dub movies, for example. In Sweden, everything is subtitled. I studied English for a couple of years at the university, too. But most Swedes are really good at English.
K: Going back a bunch of years, when you started out, was it a big decision to sing in English rather than in Swedish?
N: Nah, it was very natural, because at the time, most punk bands were singing in Swedish, and we wanted to do something else. We were a bit tired of the punk scene in Stockholm at that time, because it was getting really dull, and we wanted to play REAL rock'n'roll, so we basically only played covers in the beginning, covers of our favorite songs -- old garage songs and Stooges songs and MC5 songs and whatever. Since we were doing so many covers, it was very natural that our original material would be in English, too.
K: Do you change your presentation at all when you play at home?
N: No. We speak Swedish between the songs! On the other hand, we don't speak that much between the songs at all!
K: I thought it was funny before "Top Alcohol" [at Casino El Cami
no] yesterday, when Joakim came out from behind the drums and said, "It's very bad being the closing band at a party where there's free booze!"
N: I think all of us were a little bit drunk, which was kinda fun, to loosen up a little bit. It was fun.
K: What is it you think people enjoy about the Nomads' music?
N: God, I wish I knew! As I said before, I'm basically more a music fan than a musician myself. I guess what I would like about the Nomads is the way we take a lot of different influences and make something that is kind of personal. I like bands that do things like that, so that's what I would dig about it, I guess. You can't pinpoint us as being a garage-rock band or a punk band or whatever. We're just a rock'n'roll band that drew influences from 60 years of great music...great American music!
K: Yeah, but you put your own stamp on it, so now it's great Swedish music, too.
N: Yeah, in a way, I guess.
K: Not to give you a swelled head or anything, but I really enjoyed having a week where I could see three Nomads shows! This is definitely a high point for me. I think you guys are the best band in the world right now!
N: Thanks a lot, I really appreciate that. That's the kind of thing that makes me really happy to hear.
K: I hope you guys make it back to Texas soon!
N: Who knows! We just take it from day to day.
K: And hopefully our friends in Australia will get to hear you soon.
N: That would be great, that'd be the best, but unfortunately, that's a long, long way from Sweden to Australia, but who knows, it might happen one day. We were starting to give up hope about 10 years ago about ever playing in the U.S. because we thought, "This is stupid, we've never been to the U.S.," even though we know we have a lot of fans here and everything. But after that, probably '94 and onwards, we've been here once a year or something.
K: What was it that turned the tide for you 10 years ago?
N: Well, we didn't have any good contacts in the U.S. at that time. We couldn't even get the records out. The scene was a lot different back then. Ten years ago was before Sub Pop started. We didn't know who to deal with. Nobody really approached us, and we didn't know who to approach, because there weren't any obvious labels for us to approach. Once Sub Pop got going, there was a lot of other cool labels starting up. Sympathy [for the Record Industry] was one of the first where we felt that "This guy has EXACTLY the same musical taste we have. This guy MUST be into the Nomads, or he must like them if he gets to hear them." And when I contacted Long Gone John, it turned out that he'd been a big fan since the 80s. That was a relationship that clicked from the beginning. After we started working with John with Sympathy and Dave with Estrus, things have been so much easier.
K: Do you guys have management, or do you manage yourselves?
N: There have been some periods in the past when we had management, but these days, I pretty much do all the business side of things. It makes things a lot easier. It's all on a pretty low level, so it's pretty easy.
K: What advice would you give to bands that are starting out now?
N: Oh, that's really hard to say. I wouldn't want to be a new band starting out because it's really hard to get things to go because there's such an avalanche of bands everywhere. I dunno, I guess I'd have to say the usual -- stick to your own style, don't try to copy anybody else. Stick to the thing that you feel in your heart is your own thing. Just cliches!
K: Truisms are also true sometimes! What do you and the other Nomads do when you're not doing this -- when you're not playin'?
N: Oh, we have all sorts of different jobs. I myself work for an organization called STIM, which is the Swedish equivalent of BMI or ASCAP...the performing rights organization. So I maintain the documentation in the database; I pretty much sit in front of my computer eight hours a day. It's not exciting or anything, but it's quite interesting, I enjoy it. I've been doing it for five years and it's an okay job. And Joakim, for example, he works for the National Museum Board, so he builds exhibitions. He's got a real nice, interesting job. Bjorne works for the Swedish phone company. It's kind of hard to explain what he's doing, but he's basically connecting phone calls from planes up in the air to the ground and things like that. And Hans works for a painting company. He sells paint! He's been doing it since he left school.
K: Because this is for the I-94 Bar, what do you like to drink?
N: Lone Star!
K: Nawwwwww! I was expecting schnapps or something! Better man than I!
N: Falcon is a good Swedish beer.