Interview

Lambchop

by Lizz 23 July 2017

Your Fucking Sunny Day. The Man Who Loved Beer. Up With People. Cigarettiquette.

Lambchop’s songs are filled with gentle, grandiose, soul, alt country and disco that wriggle straight into your soul and stay there. An art school graduate who spent years working in construction, Kurt Wagner has kept the creative bit between his teeth through 14 studio albums and continues to excitedly explore music. Lambchop’s latest critically acclaimed album, FLOTUS, was inspired by crunk, trap and Shabazz Palaces. Exciting times for this guy in his late 50’s whose voice is instantly recognisable. I spoke to Kurt ahead of their show at The Waterfront and we had a right laugh about sucking the boss’s dick. Shhh, it’s a song.

Your voice is key to Lambchop’s sound. When did you first start singing and find your voice style?

I dunno, I just opened my mouth and stuff came out, that’s pretty much it. I think it’s evolved over the years and I’ve thought “oh, I should probably try to sing or something” but mainly that’s what fit the music I was making.

Wikipedia tells me that Lambchop began in 1986. Were you in bands previous to this?

Yeah, all through art school I was in bands. I never really thought about songwriting, we were just having a good time and then as time went on around ’86 or ’87 I started trying to write songs. We started Posterchild and that started the whole Lambchop thing.

Why are you called Lambchop?

Ha ha! We were originally called Posterchild and there was a band called Posterchildren. We put out a split 7” of all things and apparently a lawyer had nothing better to do than to ask us to cease and desist. Rather than struggle than that we thought we’d change our name…to R.E.N. And then we realised we’d have the same problem! It got to the point where it was just getting stupid, and then one of the band members shouted out LAMBCHOP and we thought that’s good, no one will bother us with that name.

You’ve lived in Nashville and Memphis, and you also spent some of your youth living in Sheffield. Do you feel like your music has been greatly touched by your environments and the music you’ve heard around you?

Absolutely, particularly when I was living in Sheffield I was of that age when the music was really great, in the early 70s, I was just getting into buying records and watching TOTP, reading Soundz. It had a big impression on me at the time, and British music still does. It was a formative time for me in terms of the type of music I was getting into.

I read that your latest album FLOTUS was inspired by your neighbour’s son and also your wife’s appetite for trap, electronica, crunk and hip hop amongst other genres – would you describe it as an experiment?

I would like to think of it more as an exploration. Certainly as an artist and a writer, the music I hear in different environments has an effect on, like what we were talking about before. The fact that this music had been around me for so many years just dawned on me. I like this stuff, I listen to it, maybe I should try to understand it a bit more.

And do you feel like you did understand it better after making FLOTUS?

Yeah, I’m still learning though!

The album’s called FLOTUS which is clearly a pun on POTUS. Have you felt the urge to write more politically of late?

Well you know, politics affects lives and what I try to do is deal with what goes on in my life. My wife is in politics so obviously there is some input there, absolutely. It’s just how overtly I go about doing that, and it’s part of what I’m writing about, and certainly there are songs on FLOTUS that could resonate in that direction if you choose to look at it in that way.

FLOTUS stands For Love Often Turns Us Still. What does that mean to you?

I was trying to make a record that my wife would enjoy. We have had a long term relationship, and a good relationship evolves, it changes, it does all those things and you have to roll with it. You’re not the same people you were 24 years ago when you first met, and yet it can be enriching – sometimes change can be a great thing and love matures and becomes deeper.

I believe you went to see Shabazz Palaces which had an influence on the album. What other acts are you into at present?

Just recently I finally got to see Sleaford Mods live. Oh my god. I’ve been into them for quite a while but I’d never had the opportunity to see them living where I do. It’s just amazing, conceptually, everything they do is so honest and artistic and completely on the money. Plus it feels so natural. The fact that they’re not young people makes me admire them even more because as we get older and try to navigate our way through modern music it’s interesting to find your own place there.

How do you go about deciding on sleeve covers? Can you tell us a little about the cover for FLOTUS please?

Part of the idea when I first started making music was that I looked at it as an art object (I’m not trying to be pretentious) in that it’s not just the music, it’s the whole package and how you present it. Being the visual artist that I was, the cover sleeves seemed like a natural thing to develop. I’ve used friends’ art, or artists that I admire and have some connection with. In FLOTUS’ case, being what it was, I thought it would be nice to use a portrait of my wife which was something I hadn’t done before. It just so happened that she met Obama and there was a photo of that meeting, so I tried to use that without getting in too much trouble!

You’re not afraid to breech different genres, including soul, disco, lounge, country, indie, almost classical at times. On this new album you’ve gone down an electronic route. How foreign did it feel to you when you first started working on these songs?

Everything that happened has evolved over time. There’s always been an electronic aspect to Lambchop’s music, it’s just what we do, and it’s become more prevalent over the years as my interest has grown in this area.

A new version of The Hustle is coming out in 12” in August with a Prince cover on the b side. It’s the most beautiful song, with the funkiest beat and classiest piano ever. How did this new version come into being?

It was just casually fooling around during practice. Tony, our pianist said “Oh we could do it like this” and suddenly he’s full on replicating the whole Love Unlimited Orchestra take on that song. It all came together really fast and we laughed really hard. We said “let’s go ahead and try to record it and to capture our time together”, so we did it as quickly as possible. It just sort of grew as an idea and became this thing. I never really intended it to be a major statement but in a way it is a statement of how wacky we can be!

The video for NIV is beautiful - have you ever considered making films?

I certainly had at one point, when I got out of art school I thought maybe I should continue studying and go into film. It’s the ultimate art form really, in that it encompasses everything that I’m into. At the same time, I like collaborating with other film makers when I can.

For the first eight years of the band’s existence you worked full time sanding wooden floors, practising with the band over the weekend. You have always seemed to be quite a reluctant star but someone who needs to make music for your soul to be OK. Would you say that’s true?

Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. I don’t know exactly how I would put it..I just try to work as an artist and be able to focus as an artist. If that means working for a living and doing it when you can that’s totally fine. When it shifted into a more full on thing I didn’t really want the responsibility of making a living to guide what I make and how I go about doing it. It’s tricky to navigate that over the years through the ever changing landscape of what we call the music business. Yet I’m still at it, still trying, I try not to be too grandly ambitious about what I do or think they are more than they actually are, which is the representations of my ideas and the things that I like to do. Should other people like it and want to come see it then that’s fucking amazing! Maybe I’m never gonna become the successful person who makes money out of it, or even a decent living as that gets harder but I’m still doing it and still enjoying making things.

I have to ask how the track I Sucked My Boss’s Dick? happened…I have wondered for years!

Ha ha! When we started Lambchop was just guys that I worked with. One of the guys was my boss. Lambchop used to have a set of little moments that we’d do at every practice, and that song is an example of that. So we’d always play that at every rehearsal - another is The Pack Up Song which appears on our first record. They were just funny moments that tied everything together. In that particular case we wanted to record it because it’s part of what we do. Ha ha! I still find it funny to this day!

My first introduction to Lambchop was through How I Quit Smoking back in 96, around the same time as bands like Vic Chesnutt, Will Oldham, Tindersticks, Silver Jews and Songs Ohia were popular. Were you into those acts, that I would naturally put in the same basket as Lambchop?

Oh, all of that for sure, absolutely. Essentially back then we became friends and acquaintances with most of the groups that you mentioned. We wanted to see how they developed as artists and how that related to what was going on with us. We’d all go about the process of being in a band and making music in a completely different way, and I found that really interesting as well. There was a crossover with recording with each other and it was a much smaller world back then.

You’ve done quite a few covers of songs over the years, Give Me Your Love, the Curtis Mayfield song being my favourite. Have there been any covers that you’ve attempted but that haven’t worked?

Yeah, there was one, I think it was a Michael Jackson song. We really tried it but at some point there wasn’t a consensus in the group as to moving forward with it!

How are you planning on putting your set list together for the upcoming European tour, when you have so much material to choose from? Are you taking requests?

Well, I’ve never been a big requests guy but if they end up aligning with what we’re fooling around with then fine. I used to be a lot more free about it but the band weren’t always happy with me springing things on them. I’m always willing to give something a try. The first tour after POTUS was released we played a lot of that material. We’re now playing some of the older stuff too, even going back as far as How I Quit Smoking which you mentioned earlier, and then see how it applies to how we are in this particular go-round. I’m looking forward to seeing a little more of the UK than we saw the last time! We always intended to come back, we just didn’t think it would take this long.

I can’t remember the last time you played in Norwich, or even if you have. Are you bringing your full band?

We may not have, which is weird. What we’ve been doing is doing a lot of trio shows which is me, Tony on piano and Matt on bass, and that’s how we’ll be going about it on this tour. The sound of this new record can be represented well in this way, it’s a pretty sparse sound anyway. It’s also nice when we go back to the older material in this way and it resonates a little louder through this more stripped down style.

Lambchop play the Waterfront on 14th August. Tickets available from ueatickets.ticketabc.com