Greg Szeto interviews Hutch Harris of the Thermals

GS: So I know you and Kathy played together before the Thermals formed.  Describe your first meeting and how you decided you both wanted to play music together? 

 HH: We met just straight out of high school.  We were probably both like 17 or 18, just at this punk rock show in San Jose that our bands both played at.  And we didn’t play together until a couple of years later, 97 or 98.  We had a band called Haelah.  When I met Kathy she just played drums all the time. She always just played drums in bands.  She started playing drums in Haelah with me and my friend Albert and we just kept on playing since then.

GS: So its been a pretty good musical relationship then?

HH: Yeah, always.  We just have similar tastes and we usually kind of have the same thing in mind when writing a song.

GS: Did you move to Portland after high school?

HH: Yeah we moved up here while we were still in Haelah in 98.

GS: When you guys formed Thermals, how much of that was connected to the whirling music scene of Portland?

HH: We had just done the Hutch and Kathy record which is real acoustic and a lot softer, quieter.  I kind of just started recording the first Thermals record in my house.  It was just a kind of a release, to make some songs that were really quick and fast and fun and loud…I think the Thermals definitely sound like a northwest band.  We were essentially developing the history of punk and pop music in the northwest.

GS: Since forming and putting out your three albums, have you had any interaction with other local artists like the Decemberists and Sleater-Kinney (RIP)?  Notably, Colin Meloy was in your video for “Pillar of Salt.”

HH: A lot of those people we knew before we started the band.  The Shins, and of course we did a couple tours with Sleater-Kinney.  A lot of Portland bands have kind of come up together.  We used to play with Jordan Hudson on our first record.  He lived in the same house as Colin.  So Colin would be working on Decemberists records upstairs and we’d be working on Thermals songs downstairs.

GS: Your first albums, you mentioned, were kind of a release.  Did this tie in to the content?  This very raw, lo-fi sound you produced, and how everything was kind of delivered at a break-neck pace.  Was that just you guys really looking for that release or was that more of a direction you were actively pursuing?

HH: Yeah, it was definitely a direction we wanted follow.  The point was always to just keep it really simple and keep the songs really quick and to the point and really short and really fast. 

GS: You guys really perfected distilling a song down to its essence, focusing on a few really tight, high-quality verses.  The approach is very Ramones-like.

HH: Definitely, and when I was writing those first songs, I was playing guitar with this like Johnny Ramones stance.  I was really just thinking like Misfits, and Ramones and Guided by Voices when I was writing that first record.  Just that real basic punk-rock sound.

GS: Was it just the nature of your song-writing at the time that led to you just pumping out your first two albums…just like that.

HH: When we started, that was just what kinda came out and we just kinda went with that from there.

GS: Did a lot of the content come from just a very short period of time or were there defined first record, second record periods?

HH: There really was because it was like the first half of 2002 was when I wrote all those songs for the first record.  The second record was written way more as a band, like rehearsing the sounds, different than just recording them on a four-track at your house.

GS: Even though you had this very raw sound, it eventually changed into your third fuller album, The Body The Blood The Machine (TBTBTM).  I felt like the pieces were really already there and you guys just added them up…like “How We Know” is kind of a precursor to that sound.  You definitely touched on religion and world politics in tracks, obviously like “God and Country.”  What was really the turning point where you decided to make this sound with, I hesitate to call it a “concept” album, but more of a storytelling album?

HH: It really came out more just as we were writing it, the story kind of appeared.  I really just wanted to make a politic record, but I didn’t want the lyrics to be the basic, smash you in the face hating the government.  It kinda gets real dull.  I just thought make it more about religion and the government being propped up by religion, in this case the Christian Right.  But I think the sound, it was just like you said just expanding on what we were doing in the first couple records.

GS: Yeah, and taking the storytelling approach to things enhances the impact of the content, by increasing the relatability rather than somebody just preaching on the microphone over a bunch of random tracks.

HH: Definitely and I don’t want it to seem like that anyway.  It’s just like a good book.  When you fictionalize something, it makes it a lot more interesting.  And plus, it’s not just me singing about my boring life.

GS: Hahah, point taken.  Like a book it leaves a lot open to interpretation and people can get a lot more out of it.  The play longevity definitely increases.

HH: Yeah and I think music always kinda gets away with that.  You know, you are allowed to be more vague and leave stuff open to interpretation.  Just so people can take it a number of different ways.

GS: Could you just, really quickly for those unfamiliar with your album,  go over the general plot and what it means to you?

HH: Really we were just kind of fantastizing about what we have going on in the government right now.  A government that’s real war hungry and at the same time really propped up by a religious group.  Just kinda looking to make a lot of laws based in religion or trying to ban gay marriage and stem cell research.  Basing a lot of decisions based on what a religious group wants. We just kind of fantasized well how bad could it get, where we just have a fascist dictatorship that is part Republican, part Christian or you know being the same thing.  The story is about trying to escape.  It’s not really a story about revolution.  It’s more of a selfish story about survival.

GS: A personal favorite, “Returning to the Fold”, touches on human nature and the nature of faith, especially when faced with extreme hardship.  Whose viewpoint is this supposed to be?  I feel like I can interpret it from a couple different viewpoints.  Which character did you have in mind?  And is this a mirror for your own experiences with faith?

HH: Yeah, definitely.  It comes up a lot in my songs… “God and Country” is the same way where it’s about having lack of faith.  And sometimes wanting…wishing that you did have faith…but when you look really deep down, not finding it.

GS: What’s your current classification of yourself, as far as faith is concerned?

HH: I don’t claim anything; I can’t be convinced either way.  I really just try to claim nothing.  But I always forget the difference between atheist and agnostic, which one is non-believing.

GS: Could you explain more about the imagery in “St Rosa and the Swallows”, where it comes from?

HH: That’s kind of just like another theme in our records, is to be able to have love songs that work against real harsh, punk rock songs.  It’s really just kind of a love song; it doesn’t really tie into the story.  It’s about being saved saved from yourself by someone you love.

GS: What was your experience like working with Brendan Canty from Fugazi?  How big fo an impact do you feel he had on shaping the album’s theme and the sound?

HH: He had kind of more helping with the sound and over-dubs and stuff.  Because we came in with the songs pretty much fully written, we had the lyrics, the theme and even the order of the record all the way down.  Really the mixing and putting his touches on it.  And when we were doing the guitar overdubs.  Some of those I was just kind of figuring them out in the studio and running them over and over again.  He was really helpful then and had really good suggestions.  We hadn’t ever really worked on that stuff again.  We got along really great with him; we loved him.

GS: I guess the last time I saw you guys was in New York at that Pool Party show with Ted Leo.  It was my first time at that venue and it was pretty neat.  How did you guys find the experience playing the venue and with Ted Leo?

HH: That show was cool.  It’s always fun to come out to New York, fly out to the east coast for a couple shows.  It was fucking so hot on the stage.  Birds of Avalon, I had never seen them.  I loved them, I thought they were great.  We had seen Ted before.  We were trying to do a little tour with Ted and those guys this fall since we were both touring, but it didn’t work out.  Hopefully we’ll do a tour with those guys someday.

GS: I don’t know if you guys heard but there was also this burlesque, rock marching band (Mucca Pazza) that was just kind of roaming the basin of the swimming pool before you came on

HH: You know we know some of them from Chicago.  Actually, some of those guys were on tour with Cursive as their horn section and we met them there.

GS: They were pretty inventive; they hooked up these megaphones strapped to their helmets, and amped electric guitars and even a violin up through the megaphones.  It was wild.

HH: Oh man that’s rad.  We didn’t get to see any of that.

GS: You mentioned you like flying to the East Coast.  What are your standout cities right now?

HH: The last time we played the Black Cat was fantastic.  Right now, DC, New York, Philly and Boston.  Especially New York, we’ve been hitting it so much.  This will be when we get there in October it’ll be our eighth trip to New York this year, playing a couple shows each time.

 GS: When you guys are flying out and on tour, what are you listening to right now?

 HH: I’ve got that new Common record that I like a lot.  Listening to some old punk stuff like Suicide and Birthday Party.  I got the new PJ Harvey yesterday and that’s great.  Can, always.  Jay-Z hahah.

GS: Are you guys thinking about adding any more cover songs into your live set?

HH: We played this northwest festival in Portland a couple weeks ago so we learned more.  We did that Built to Spill song and we learned two Wipers songs and we learned a Dead Men song.  So we’ll probably be playing some of that on tour.

GS: You mentioned when we spoke before that you guys were in the studio working on your fourth album.  What stage is that at?

HH: I’m just working on lyrics right now.  We just did demos for six of the songs we have, and we’ll probably have five or six more songs.  We’ll just keep writing and have a ton of songs when we go into the studio.

GS: Still coming out on Sub-Pop?

HH: It will not be coming out on Sub-pop.  They offered us another contract and we decided not to take it.

GS: Where are you guys going?

HH: We don’t know right now.  We are just write and record and not worry about it for now.  When we have it all written, see about who will put it out. 

GS: What’s it looking like thematically and sound-wise now?

HH: Right now, I’m writing all the lyrics as if I were dead already. Hahaha.  That’s gonna be the theme of it, for sure.

GS: Are you thinking of your sound going back to your earlier albums, or in the same directions?

HH: It’s still going further, I don’t wanna say exactly like TBTBTM, but kind of in that direction.  We are gonna have a couple more clean songs in there.  Not necessarily like “Test Pattern” like a ballad, but more like…we have this kinda dancey song that’s a little different than what we’ve done.

GS: Great, well that’s all I’ve got.  Any parting words for the people in the Baltimore and DC area?

HH: We’re really stoked to come out again.  Come by and see us.