Wasp In The House
Rising songwriter Chris Garver maps out his inspirations: witches, shamans and juju.
26.January.2007

Though only 24 years old, Denton’s Chris Garver has been making music for much longer than people have been downloading it. His first widespread exposure came thanks to We Shot JR back in May 2006, where Garver’s E4/E5, collection of stripped-down songwriting full of wit, tension and reckless, lo-fi abandon, was given an anonymous thumbs-up.

But such a short window of exposure since then belies Garver’s massive output--his December EP from (yup) this December is the 11th release bearing his name, and even though the man has been hiding Will Johnson-like songwriting efficiency from locals for years, his latest collection deserves all of the exposure it can get. Aggression, experimentation and vulnerability share a tricky tightrope walk on December EP, but they combine on the collection’s three songs in ways that elude most songwriters years--hell, decades--after turning 24.

The EP’s three songs have gotten frequent spins at DdHQ in the past month, so we were anxious to talk to the man behind them about his songwriting approach and his future plans, including tonight’s full-band concert at Secret Headquarters in Denton. Somehow, we coaxed the incredibly shy redhead to chat with us over the phone after he refused an in-person chat, but by the end of our interview, he was already calling us to feed additional quotes. Here’s to hoping we didn’t create a chatty monster out of Chris.


Chris Garver performs at The Cavern in Dallas in June 2006.  (photo: Sam Machkovech)

Dd: I’ve never interviewed a redheaded performer before, so you're stuck with this question: How come redheads are in the minority in a scene like independent music?

CG: Probably just because redheads are in the minority in general.

Well, so are independent musicians...shouldn’t there be more of the minority in the minority?

I think it’s just remnants of the long-gone prejudices when redheads were burnt at the stake as witches or possessed demons.

Do you ever see resentment like that sneak into your music?

I probably have three or four songs where I mention red hair, but always just because it sounds nice...it’s the first color of hair I think of if I need to mention a hair color in a song.

It seems appropriate that you’re playing one of these rare We Shot JR showcases, because you’re among the local acts he went out of his way to champion in his first few months. What does local blog praise amount to for you, in terms of either publicity or for you personally?

Well, I’ve never booked my own shows. It seems that every time, all three times I’ve been on JR, I’ve gotten show requests from random venues, sometimes bigger places, but also places like The Bone and Standard and Pours, which I agreed to because it’s a show but kinda wish I hadn’t afterward--very sparsely populated. Playing at Rubber Gloves and especially Secret HQ has been very nice.

Speaking of Web stuff, you’re also giving away your last recording, The December EP, as a free download at chrisgarver.com. It’s not the same as Wilco leaking an album, certainly, but what compelled you to give it away?

I had those three songs together all of a sudden, and I really liked them, and they fit together. I figured, those will be the three MP3s you can download...the entire album will come out sometime this year.

Really--it’s part of a bigger album?

Yeah, it’ll probably grow by about four times.

I was curious how that video for “The First Stone You Throw” came together.

I was just up late one night and came across this scripting language called AVISynth. It’s a nonlinear video editing scripting language, like HTML. It’s really basic, but it seemed fun to me, so I downloaded a bunch of public doman video sources, cut out the little parts that I liked and strung them all together. It took about three hours, it wasn’t too hard.

Is that something you might do again? Has it received a good response?

I liked how the meaning of that song, the video images projected a new meaning for the song for me. I was thinking of possibly doing a lot more for the upcoming album. I don’t wanna say for the entire album, because I don’t want to push myself in a corner, but it would be pretty incredible, I think, to have an entire album with video accompaniment.

I’m a huge fan of the three songs there so far. You’ve got the full band used in really inventive ways in all three tracks--on "The First Stone You Throw," you’ve got the bass anchoring it while the rest of the instruments, they kinda lollygag around, but there’s still purpose to them. I’ve yet to listen to all 11 of your albums, so I can only trust your answer to this one: Is there a sense of evolution for you with these three songs as far as going toward this album and something different? Or have you been leaning in this direction for a while?

I’m going forward by reaching back a little bit. These songs are definitely new and have new feelings for me. They’re a unique entity for me. But they also are similar to the songs I used to write maybe in high school or a little bit later in bands I was in. The sound--some of my earlier ablums were a lot more layered than my recent ones. Even E4/E5 isn’t as layered as it could be, there are a lot of sparse tracks on there. I used to write a lot heavier, rockier songs.

I wouldn’t call these songs “rocky,” per se--

Yeah, it’s kind of a cop-out description.

Well, “rocky” is misleading, and I’m just trying to piece together, you go in a lot of different directions...I saw the Ornette Coleman quote on your site, and I can hear free-form jazz informing your music, and some people have been quick to point out things like Animal Collective, freak-folk, and JR definitely talked about the Bright Eyes sound in the way your vocals go, and I hear some earlier Bright Eyes lo-fi full-band stuff as well. What bands made you want to go in a certain direction for the latest stuff?

For this album, it started with a fascination with the African musician, Sunny Ade. I just got an LP of his, and I was floored by it. As a joke, I told JR that I was going to make a juju folk album...juju music is the kind that Sunny Ade claims to play. I kinda went from there. Really, it’s just a matter of different arrangements. At the base, these songs are pretty similar to all of the other songs I’ve ever written. Even so, arrangement is kinda overvalued or overpushed lately--I hear a whole lot of arrangements and not a lot of black outline, ink, of songs underneath.

So are you more interested in the arrangement or the ink?

The ink is already there. I'm just coloring it with different arrangements [this time].

Tell me about the recording of it. At home with friends? Or did you multitrack it all by yourself?

I record it all myself. I lay down the acoustic track and the vocals, usually at the same time. I don’t really like to break the guitar and the vocals away, it takes away from too much possible coloring and emotive variation when you just strum it down on top of a metrognome and then sing on top of it, it loses a certain interplay between the guitar and the vocals. I don’t like to sacrifice that. On "The First Stone You Throw," I did one layer after another...it was actually while my girlfriend was sick. I sat in the room and did it very quietly. It was an exercise that sounded alright.

You do bass and drums then.

Yeah, I usually do the bass last. Just kinda listen to what I’ve gotten, come up with something and put it on top.

That’s funny--producers usually do drums and bass first, and on "The First Stone," the bass drives it...

I usually do about two takes of drums and cut out the parts where I mess up or get off the track, but I’m pretty good at keeping time even on wavering guitar tracks.

You’re obviously not fond of higher fidelity--is it purely just a cost issue, or do you specifically go out of your way to add mess, noise and audio clipping when appropriate?

It’s a little bit of both. If I had the resources, I’d definitely invest in newer, better equipment, but also I really enjoy the sound of old records. Albums like The Stooges’ Raw Power, White Light White Heat, they just have a certain sound that’s more personal to me. For the same reason that some newer indie bands will put a layer of record hiss on top of their recordings to give it that vibe...I just wanna have an old doo-wop Motown meets Stooges and VU vibe or sound.

I dunno that I hear too much doo-wop...

I just mean the quality--

Yeah, the feeling. But a Chris Garver doo-wop record wouldn’t exactly be out of the question, would it?

I’ll have to look into that.

Layered vocals and things like that. The thing about the EP I wonder about is that your lyrics are obscured by the noise. The end of "Why Oh Why You," it’s got the voices bouncing around, but some of the main lyrics--maybe I’m turning old and I can’t hear as well--but are you purposely making it harder to understand, or are you trying to make the singing part of the overall rising noise?

There’s no conscious effort to make things quieter or less intelligible. They're kinda faster, more upbeat songs, and I have to spit stuff out faster, but I think the lyrics will eventually be legible after a few listens, from what I’ve heard from friends.

Is the Friday concert your first “solo” show with a full band?

Yes, it will be.

How long’s it been since you’ve played in concert with a full band?

It’s been probably four-five years. I played at an open mike night with a band I was in called SockDay. We didn’t know what we were doing. We had the amps facing each other, not towards the audience. But it was fun.

You’ve been making music for a long time--how were you making music back in high school?

I was always in various bands, starting when I was 12. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I started writing my own stuff regularly, and it really wasn’t until about 2003 that I decided this is what I’ll probably end up doing from now on.

Are you still in school?

No, I got finished with school. Um, I didn’t actually finish it--I got tired of school, stopped going to school at UNT. I was studying composition and audio engineering. I just got a bad liver, my classmates were pretty lame. It’s kind of a gamble, you never know. So much depends on the quality of your classmates.

It sounds like you have the beginning of a really...it sounds like there’s something bigger growing. Seems like a good leaping-off point in terms of momentum. Do you feel that way?

Definitely. I really like the aggression and the amplitude...whatever the word I’m thinking of.

So what’s next?

I’ll definitely continue writing songs...at this point, it’s more of a conviction than a hobby for me. I get pretty sad and kinda worn down when I can’t work, when I haven’t been able to work. I’m definitely going to fill this album out with more aggressive songs, in terms of sound activity, I guess. After that, maybe I’ll do that doo-wop album. I was also thinking about doing...doing a Texas album before Sufjan Stevens can do it. I’m gonna call it Stevens F. Austin, make sure no Yankee makes an album about our great state.

I think you can beat him to the punch if you finish before 2020. I’m looking forward to seeing the full-band lineup, assuming the SHQ rooftop stays up for the whole show.

Thank you very much.

[Five minutes later, our phone rings again, and Chris says he forgot to add something important.]

Try to work this into the story...if you’d asked me something along the lines of how I go about writing my songs, I would’ve otld you about this tory I read a long time ago about a hunter-gatherer tribe. After several days of not being able to find any game to hunt, a group of hunters went to see this shaman. The shaman took a puff from his pipe, then took out this dried, thin piece of buffalo leather. He crumpled it up into a ball and laid it flat, and gave it to the hunters to use as a map--to follow the creases from the folding. Using that chance folds of the map, they were able to find new game by exploring regions they never would’ve thought to explore before. That’s pretty much how I write songs--make creases and follow them, like solving a puzzle.

...I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone describe songwriting that way. I try to avoid the “how do you write your songs question” normally...Do you get on the computer for typing or are you a pen-and-paper guy?

I just write in pocket-sized Mead notebooks.

What’s your ideal situation, if you’re sitting down to write--is it at night? When you’re out and about?

Usually at night. I’m a night owl, for sure. I don’t really like to spew forth things that are from my mind--your mind can get in the way of what really needs to be said, compared to what your id or ego wants you to say. I like to generate a palette of words as a starting point. Once I’ve got something that sounds alright, a couple of lines, I treat it as a puzzle, work on it from there, unfold it, make sure each line has a barb that connects it to the other line.

...I don’t have any follow-ups, but I’ll make sure to attach that.

That was the one question I’d prepared a notecard response to.

[laughs] This is your first interview, right? You were nervous about not wanting to do it in person.

Well, just for the same reason I had to call back just now--if we’d done this over e-mail, my responses would’ve been three paragraphs each.  


Chris Garver opens for Tree Wave and War Wizards at Secret Headquarters' We Shot JR showcase on Friday, January 26.