Interview: Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow on ‘Defend Yourself,’ Rush, and being the hipsters of their time

Last year you celebrated the 20^th anniversary of Bakesale, what do you think it is about that record that still resonates with people?

Well, I guess it’s pretty good [laughs]. I guess listening to it myself—I’ve never thought too much about it, but when we re-issued it, I kind of had to listen to it again, and it has a nice feel to it; it’s kind of an approachable record, for Sebadoh especially. It’s not too dark; it’s not too light, it’s just right. It’s like the Goldilocks record; not too hard, not too soft. Not too heart-broken, not too angry. It’s a nice mix of the Sebadoh sensibilities in one record. Our records generally swing from extremes, and don’t make for really consistent listening for a lot of people. They do for us, but not for most people.

What was the mood in the band like coming into that record after [Sebadoh co-founder] Eric Gaffeny quit? Was it a turbulent time for the band?

No, it was euphoric to be honest [laughs]. Eric was a difficult guy. He was really struggling with the band becoming more popular; he was really struggling with sharing the spotlight with me. He’s an absolute leader, and deserves a spotlight of his own, but I had kind of forced him into this band where he and I were going to be trading off, thinking that was a really great idea. Eric Gaffney did not want to be doing that. Eric Gaffney wanted to be front and center—which is great, I mean, I believed in him. I’m an Eric Gaffney fan, that’s why I was playing in a band with him, but Eric Gaffney was not a Lou Barlow fan. So him leaving the band was awesome. All of this resistance just disappeared for a while, and it was really nice.

The last time I saw Sebadoh you were doing a Harmacy-themed tour—what was that experience like? You’ve said many times that you’re not really a huge fan of that album.

Well, that’s when all the pressure really started coming down. That’s the record where the clichés started to happen. Like, we got into the studio, and our engineer / producer—if you can call anybody who’s ever worked for Sebadoh a producer—he just basically sat me down and said, “You’ve got to fire the drummer, and you’ve got to do it now! You tell me right now that he’s fired, and Ill fly in Joey Waronker,” who was a big studio musician at the time—probably still is. “We’ll fly him out to Boston, and he’ll come in here and destroy, kill these songs, and you guys will be awesome. These songs will leap off the fucking vinyl. They’ll play your video on MTV.” The guy basically gave me that whole line. And I was like, “Ah, fuck off.” I mean, he reduced me to tears. I’m in the studio, he’s telling me all this shit, and I’m drinking beer. And finally, I’m on my tenth beer, and this guy is just wearing me down, and I just burst out crying like, “Oh my god, we’ve got to fire Bob!”

But then the next day, the hangover comes, and we’re like, “We’re not going to fire Bob—Bob’s our friend, which is more important than becoming like, the flavor of the month. We’re not going to be the next Nirvana, fuck it [laughs]. It’s not going to happen. We’re not even going to be the next Sloan. We’re going to make the record we were destined to make, which will not be great.” And that was what the whole vibe became for that record. Although I love the songs, the experience of recording that record was just a bummer.

Is it weird for you when people tell you that’s their favourite Sebadoh album?

Well, no I understand—the songs are good, I’m not going to lie. I mean, I’m saying the songs are good; I’m not saying like, “It’s great!” Those people don’t know that that record lost hundreds of thousands of dollars that I still owe Sub Pop Records [laughs]. It only sold 90,000 copies, which was a huge disappointment for Sub Pop Records, and I never heard the end of that. I’m still not hearing the end of it. We put out re-issues with them, and we’re like, “Can we get some money for that?” And they’re like, “No, of course not! You’re never going to see another dime from us for sales forever. It’s never going to happen. We spent a lot of money FedEx-ing your record all over North America. There’s no way you’re ever going to see any money from us.” Which is fine. We played the game and we lost—that’s what that record is to me. We decided to get in there and act like a real band, and we got fucking slapped around.

What are your thoughts on the way music is distributed these days?

I think when people start talking about like, “You only receive, 1/100^th of a penny for every play on Spotify,” and I think like, why would you receive any more than that? That’s one play, to one person. It’s not radio play, you know? Its not like getting played on drive time, on a commercial Alternative radio station, and reaching a million people in one play. It’s not like that, so why the hell would they ever—why would the royalties be anywhere close to that? Although I’m sure it could be totally tweaked, and they will tweak it as things go along. But for me personally … however people find music is fine with me. Because what it all comes down to is whether they’re going to come see my band play live or not. Who knows, maybe I’ve had a couple of hundred thousand plays on Spotify, but it’s a hundred thousand separate people, all of who didn’t even ask for that, it may have just played because its on the Pavement playlist. Getting into that and getting mad about it, and even having a strong opinion about it is just not my business. I mean, it is my business, but it’s not. It’s like, that stuff will work itself out. I’m lucky enough to luck my way through life and still manage to be a musician, but I do it through the traditional means of playing live shows.

Do you prefer putting out music with Bandcamp? It seems like such a direct way to reach fans.

Yeah, I think Bandcamp is great. Although when you put stuff up, you do have to do it with the reality, and accept the reality, that like out of 100 people that stream your record, maybe one person is going to buy it. Unless you’re like, Sufjan Stevens or something. When we did our EP on Bandcamp, I thought it did really well. We recouped the entire cost of making the album. We were able to make our record based on what we took in from Bandcamp just from the EP that we put out. As far as making it possible for Jason and Bob to fly out to LA to to hang out with me for a couple of weeks to record a record. When I put up my old stuff on Bandcamp, I sell maybe 5 digital copies of it a month. That doesn’t bother me necessarily, because it’s just up, and it’s there, and I did it myself. I made the little page myself, and put the little artwork that I wanted to put in there. I’m able to personalize that stuff enough that I feel like it’s worth my while.

You’re pretty active on social media; do you ever wonder what it would have been like if you had access to services like that when you were starting out? Do you think it would have helped your projects, or would it have been a total disaster?

It probably would have helped. But at the same time, I think I would have wasted shitloads of time like, fighting with critics. Because it even happens today. It’s like, a hundred people could’ve written me to say, “Oh you’re great, I love your new record.” One person could’ve said, “I don’t like it, it’s a piece of shit. You suck, Steve Malkmus is 100 times better than you,” and I would’ve spent the next week composing some kind of response to somebody. It’s almost the nature of it, when you’re young and competitive, you just waste so much time defending yourself—so to speak—and also just caught up in that sort of bullshit of tit for tat, and who’s better than who. It’s like, I heard once that the lead singer of My Morning Jacket is really mad because the guy from Band of Horses sounds like him. That’s the kind of petty shit—even if your band is huge, you have hundreds of thousands of fans, people adore you, and you’re still going to waste your fucking time getting mad thinking some band ripped you off. It’s shocking what the young male mind is capable of. So I just imagine if I would’ve had Facebook and all that shit at my disposal as a kid, I would’ve just been such a dick with it, just getting high and tweeting all the time, just dumb shit. So in a way, I’m glad it was the way it was.

Are there plans for more shows or recording with Dinosaur Jr.?

Yeah, that’s an ongoing thing. We’re supposed to start recording again in the fall.

Has your relationship with the band changed since you’ve been back and released three records?

I mean, Dinosaur is kind of fascinating for me, just because I spent so much time—I mean I got kicked out of the band and I spent—this is an example of what I was talking about—the pettiness of youth, like I said. So much time like, “How dare they kick me out of the band, and J sucks!” I spent so much time doing that, and looking back on that now, it’s like, “Whoa, what an enormous waste of time.” And it’s actually really nice that I’m able to … to be able to come back to that band, and do like a re-do kind of thing is amazing. My relationship with J, and my relationship with that band was difficult, but the thing that J and I have in common is that we think the music is the most important thing. And that’s incredibly refreshing. I get off on that with Dinosaur Jr. I just like the fact that J and I, if we have nothing else in common, we do actually believe in the music above all. We believe that that’s actually more important than whether he and I are like, hugging each other all the time.

What’s coming up for you that you can let us in on?

Well, I have a solo album coming out in September called “Brace the Wave.” So that’s a thing.

Sebadoh play Montreal’s Bar le Ritz PDB on May 26 and Toronto’s Lee Palace on May 27.