>> [MUSIC] Our guest today is Lou Barlow who you
probably know from Dinosaur Jr.,
Sebadoh, Folk Implosion, Deluxx Folk Implosion.
Am I missing anything?
>> I don't know. I got lost.
>> Part Bjorn Bourg,
Part Bill Ward from Black Sabbath.
Who is your main inspiration for that band?
>> Probably Bjorn Bourg that's a good one.
>> Really?
>> Yeah, I can't do the shorts [LAUGHTER] but yeah,
I know Stephen piercing of Ratt.
I'll check my headband and be like,
"Wow, I'm almost at Stephen Pierce level with this headband today."
>> What do you do for your first hour of work every day?
>> Does that include, like,
just writing emails to lawyers and stuff like that? [LAUGHTER]
>> Yeah. I guess so. When you get a royalty check,
its itemized and says what song indeed is,
you're being paid out for,
so is natural one the one that you are still seeing the most windfall from?
>> Yeah, probably. But even then it's kind of
funny it doesn't amount to like 90 percent of it or anything.
I have a lot of songs and they all add up.
But the basic royalties that I get.
Somehow those aren't always the same.
I don't know why my BMI cheques have been
so incredibly consistent for 25 years. [LAUGHTER]
>> That's wild.
>> It is wild, I mean, they're not large,
but they are consistent.
Like I said, it's all very modest.
>> Now, that we're talking about money a little bit.
When I saw you perform,
you relate a story about when you
split ways with Dinosaur Jr. and
you got a check for 10 grand.
Thinking about that, it surprised me.
I was like, "Wow, good for them for setting Lou up with something."
>> Yeah. I mean, we'd sold. I mean,
you have to realize back in the 80s there was actual record sales.
I mean, if you were successful,
you would sell between 50 and 100,000 copies domestically.
It gave me a little nest egg.
They got me over the bump between not being
a Dinosaur Jr. and getting my other things off the ground.
>> What's the most expensive equipment and you've ever invested in?
>> Pro Tools, DG-001 setup in my Mac tower and my screen.
>> What would've been different if those
first Sebadoh records were on Pro Tools?
>> It would've been amazing [LAUGHTER].
The word Lo-fi would've never been thrown around, right?
>> I wouldn't say that necessarily.
I would've still done pretty raw recordings and
I wouldn't have used cassette and
I would've just made it absolutely overwhelming.
I thought the 2000s were really cool period of music because
I thought that was really when bands were really embracing
home recording because of digital things,
and there were bands like Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective.
A lot of bands in the 2000s,
that were categorized as indie bands were actually producing
their own music like Death Cab for Cutie and
what an incredible leap and quality of the music made.
Indie music, as I understood it to be made in the 2000s because
basically you would have like the drummer or
the bass player engineering the recordings for these bands.
I was jealous of that because I had to live through the 90s,
which was the worst time to be in a studio as far as I could tell.
People fetishized the 90s.
But you had to basically channel everything through somebody who could
operate a 24 track reel-to-reel machine [LAUGHTER],
and they would say,
"Can you just make it sound like this? "
And then they'd be putting triggers on the drums and then you'd be like,
"Can't we just use the room sound likes?"
And they're like, "No we cannot use the rooms sound likes." [LAUGHTER]
A lot of records in the 90s sound like absolute garbage like rock records anyway.
I don't like the way they sound.
I wished I had just stuck to 4-track. [LAUGHTER]
>> Yeah.
>> What I did initially was take my 4-track and then say,
"Here's my 4-track recordings," and they'd be great.
So these are demos?
And I'm like, "No, they're not demos.
We're going to run the 4-track through this board," and
that's what the record is going to be and I had great results that way.
>> So you don't like the sounds of those records now?
>> Absolutely not. In the 90s too, there was
this bizarre compulsion to bury the vocals that I still don't understand.
I'm just like why did we do that? [LAUGHTER].
>> Yeah.
>> I don't understand why, like why is the guitar the lattice thing in the mix?
It's the most annoying.
Why can't everything just sound like a 60s record.
Why can't we make the guitar sound like, Pete Townsend guitar?
Why is that so difficult?
It's like the clean guitar through a vox.
These are very simple things that these people did in the 60s.
It's not just the playing.
I mean the playing of course is a huge part of it,
but it's like why were these basically
elemental recordings that sound have full fidelity to them?
Why is that so difficult to recapture?
>> This is called quiz 500,
its 500 music questions,
and we'll do them until you get one wrong.
All right? You ready?
>> Yeah.
>> On what instrument would you find machine heads?
>> Guitars, and bassists.
>> Who were the fab four?
>> The Beatles.
>> Name the lead singer of Yes?
>> It's not that I don't care about them [LAUGHTER].
I can see him, I can hear him in my head. I don't know.
>> John Anderson.
>> I love that on your most recent album,
you're finishing songs you began at the age of 13.
>> There's actually more where that came from.
I think what I like most about that is,
I think the best music is made through collaboration.
Collaboration is such an intimate and personal process
that it's really difficult to have that kind
of relationship with people where you can truly
collaborate in a way that you need to make extraordinary music.
I've had it a few times with a few people,
but I collaborate with my son, [LAUGHTER].
That kind of distance in years is the only thing that really
truly resembles how it is to collaborate with another person,
because myself, as a 13-year-old, was an entirely different person.
>> These songs that you did revisit,
were they still swimming in your head as well?
>> No, these are all things. It's like if I go back to them,
it's not like I listened to somebody say, "Wow, that was good."
And I was like, "I've never forgotten about it."
>> Yeah, that's terrific.
>> I have a pretty patchy memory for things like,
I can't remember the streets of my hometown
when I was 13 or 14,
but I can remember melodies that I came up with back then that for some reason,
will come back to me randomly.
They just visit me. They're just like
these little ghosts that come back every once in a while.
I hadn't thought about that in a while.
It's just funny how it happens.
>> It was good to see you again, Lou.
Thanks for being here.
>> No worries. Great to be here.
Where did we meet before?
>> I was in the video for Ocean by your band Sebadoh.
>> Okay, were you in the audience?
>> Yeah. I was the guy who was like this.
>> It's about a minute 10 into the video or something like that, right?
>> Yeah.
>> I'm rolling around and then there's a crowd shot and then there's you,
everybody in that video did a great job.
But you are memorable.
>> Thank you.
>> To say the least.
>> Right back at you
[LAUGHTER].