Interview: Joe Lally
We recently got to sit down and chat with Joe Lally, known as the bassist for seminal punk band Fugazi, and who is currently touring as a solo artist with three albums now under his belt. Read on for his thoughts on the zen of touring, his love of funk, and the ethics of his music.
How did you like playing the festival?
Joe : Actually, I don’t have a lot of experience playing them. This is really the first festival I’ve played in America that’s like, a big stage outside. Fugazi never did it, we never played festivals, because we were autodidactic. We had to call the shots about what we were doing, because we wanted to control the door prices, so that kind of leaves festivals out. So we kind of blew them off and that was good for us. That worked for us, it had nothing to do with what anyone else was doing. In Europe I get asked to do one every once and a while, so I’ll fly in and do one, and it’s hard to just do one show. You didn’t play the night before, and you won’t play the night after so if it sucks, you can’t just go on to the next show and forget about it, it sticks with you and it hurts. But anyway, it was a nice day. It was the first day for all three of us playing a show together. We practiced for the previous three days and it felt nice. I could have heard Allison (cellist) better, but it was okay.
Well, overall do you enjoy touring?
Joe: Oh yeah, totally.
A lot of local artists I’ve interviewed really talk about it as an enriching experience. Would you agree?
Joe: Yeah, I mean it is the ability to be free enough to be traveling around like that. To have a destination every day and know what you’re going to do, there’s a very relaxing quality to it, a very zen quality. Your life is very in order and understood. I don’t know about when I’m off tour, if I understood that quite yet, but yeah, there’s a total beauty and everything is in its place. You’re all just aiming towards the show that night. It’s a wonderful way of being focused.
Is this the first time you have played with a cellist?
Joe: Yeah, it’s the first time we did a show. She has joined me with other people in the band. The three of us have been on the same stage before, but she was just adding a rhythmic quality or a sound to a song or two. Three years ago I was touring in the states and she was in Canada and we passed through. We were doing shows where she opened and we got her up and had her join the fray for a couple of songs. We were in Switzerland together earlier this year, in March. She opened a show that I played with my band that I’d been touring with pretty consistently. I’d been playing since about halfway through 2010 with the same two people. I’d been playing with the guitarist for a while, but we never had a lot of time with the drummer we had. He was on our record, Emanuele. Then after the record was done, we really needed to find someone or we were just going to get frustrated trying to do shows with someone who had never practiced. He was great and he didn’t need the practice, but we did. We wanted to be able to do more and more. We found Fabio Kinka. So now I have Elisa Abela on guitar and Fabio Kinka, usually, on all the playing I’m doing. On this tour, I couldn’t really afford to bring them. Ricardo Lagomasino played drums today, and this is my 8th tour with him.
You currently live in Rome, but where are you from originally?
Joe: I grew up in Rockville, Maryland. It’s like a half hour north of D.C. and it’s just far enough away that when all the local stuff was going on with hardcore and shit, it took me an unnecessarily long time to find out what was happening. It slowly kind of came together. I saw some bands and went to some other shows. Some bands that were playing out in the suburbs with friends of mine, in a band called The Obsessed. I think they actually played with Scream and GI [Government Issue] one night. They were like, “You gotta come see the bands”, I think they knew I’d like these bands, because they knew I liked punk rock and everything. The Obsessed was more of a heavy rock band, but they did a bunch of punk covers. So I went out and saw these local bands. From there I was going more into the city. I kind of picked up on it, but you don’t really get flyers, so you go to the shows and you pick up flyers and learn about what’s gonna happen next. Then I started to find out that all these kids I’ve been seeing at shows were and bands you know and they put out their own records. It really blew me mind. That was what really made me feel like, “Wow, I can play music.” I still hadn’t picked up an instrument until maybe ’83 or ’84. I just went out and bought a bass, didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. Started writing songs with a friend. That’s kind of how I started playing music, but I was going to see bands since I was about 10. I’m not sure when I started to see R&B bands. The music I listened to, no one else listened to, just me and my two neighbors, because their older brothers were into that. And they were so nice, they really brought the younger kids along. That’s where my musical thing really started, watching and listening to that music. I absorbed a lot of what was going on without really understanding it. You learn a lot from what you love. That shit meant a lot to me then. I really loved Otis Redding, James Brown, Parliament, Funkadelic, Graham Central Station, Sly and The Family Stone.
Would you say a lot of your songs are rooted in that?
Joe: Totally. I mean, they really are. I realized later that I can’t really get that out of me at all. That’s natural to me, because that was my first love of music when I was young. I picked up on how the music was constructed and where the bass sits in the music. Although I’ve never been much of an improviser, in that sense, I still place the music that way. I kind of realized, somebody talked me into being a part of the sound carriers for Damo Suzuki. A friend of mine in Italy, Massimo Pupillo from Zu, convinced me to do this. I could come up and join them and he would play bass too. When I got there he kind of just left and went home. I used his cabinet and stuff. It was really good for me. I never see Massimo, but he really helped and encouraged me to do things, and he’s been good for me. Even though I never see him and I don’t know what the hell’s going on with him, I have to thank him. It was good experience. They were really, really good players. I had no business being on stage with the other people, because Massimo can put together really good players. I found out that my idea of improvisation is I go straight to the funk. I can’t even stop myself, that’s what is naturally coming out of me and it’s really weird. It’s not like I’ve ever wanted to be in a funk band, but it’s just part of my musical make up.
You composed “The Kill”, correct?
Joe: Well, it was the band, and then I had to settle into a bass line. That one was more me and Ian figuring out how it was going to be put together. Then in the studio, Jerry’s percussion really made that song sit where it should.
From my perspective, the style of your first two albums very much resembles the style of “The Kill”. Would you agree?
Joe: Yeah, it was constructed that way then. I didn’t really use that as a guide for the future, it’s just that in a way that was me convincing people to go ahead and do that kind of song. The song was tailored to my voice. It was the third song that I was going to be singing on a Fugazi record, and by then they understood that things had to get toned down a little to allow my voice to come out. That happened on that song. I really pushed Guy to be okay with not exactly knowing what you’re going to do for the song. So that was different about what Fugazi might normally do. Most of the songs on that record were written to death. A lot of time was taken to put those songs in place, but you know my song was “we will do this and if you do this it will be okay.” The next thing you know, we’re just laying down takes. And it worked out great! And that probably helped encourage me to keep going. I probably ran with that.
Lyrically would you say you associate with spoken word or protest songs?
Joe: Really, I do what I can do. I’m working with what I’m able to, what is there to work with. Especially when I started recording on my own, I couldn’t really project well with my voice. I was asking the whole musical situation to come meet me at my quiet voice. That’s improved some, I’ve figured out how to sing a little better. I’m almost there—I can really control it better. My ears are also kind of shot, so I don’t want to be loud as hell on stage. So I still, even at a show like this when the monitors are loud as hell, bring everything down. It’s really about I’m trying to work with what I have. I’m working with the bare necessities. I’m trying to make the most of what’s naturally there. I’m not trying to do something I’m not.
Over the course of the albums there’s been a steady build up. The first album was very spare and quiet, while the latest album feels like a full band record. Would you attribute that to you gaining courage or what?
Joe: To some degree, but it’s also the experience and the songwriting, and having explored my first concept. I don’t necessarily want to do the same thing over and over again, so having done that on the first two records and being that I was quite alone in Italy trying to figure out how the music was going to be constructed. At the point where I was ready to start demoing the songs for myself so I could see how the songs sat, I had a drummer who couldn’t practice very much, and no set guitar player. That’s when Elisa came along. But it took a while, because I was convincing her to play guitar—she’d only really played drums live. She plays a lot of instruments. I saw her playing sitting down at home, she’d never really played guitar on stage. So I was just like “You’re a guitar player, you’re really good. You should play guitar with me.” I was really looking for someone like her, a natural who can improvise. She’s great. She’s from Sicily, so I went back to Rome and that was summer. We were isolated. I brought my instruments and my laptop. We just started putting down my ideas. A song like “Ministry of The Interior” was completely executed there, by total accident. I had these words and the first time I sang the melody and there it was. I came back and enhanced it with the guitar and found some changes. I can’t really play guitar, I can’t really chord. I know a major and I know a two string chord. So I thought that was cool, maybe I’ll come up with something different this way. My limitations worked for me. So I went with that and started to really write the whole record, because it was something new.
I had arrived at that point, because we kind of figured it out in the studio. I knew I wasn’t going to go all the way back to America and bring somebody to do it, I thought I was going to have to. I didn’t want to be away so long when I was practicing with people there. I didn’t want to be away from my wife and kid for so long. So it slowly developed in Italy and it took a while to figure out what the songs were. Meanwhile I started playing with Elisa all the time. She started learning all my material from all my records, because she just loved the music and was happy to have someone who was interested in her as a musician. She just sat around playing my songs while she was at home, on drums, on saxophone, on keyboard, just any way she could she just enjoyed doing it. So I was given a gift there. We played with Emanuele for a long time, he’s on the record, so I was writing toward her playing and toward Emanuele’s drumming. So it was a combination of things. But there was only a little actual input from them. I understood how Elisa could play this song or that song. But overall it was without a lot of practice with Emanuele.
What is the writing process for you?
Joe: Everything is always building. I have a lot of bass lines. When I have a moment to mess around on the bass and when I play something I enjoy, I keep that. Later when I have a little more time to make something out of something I liked, I’ll put a drumbeat to it. The drumbeat can be really spare just so it says something, but I’ve gotten a little better at my little program so I can put things just as I’m hearing them. I can put them in place. It’s kind of cool, but I don’t mind there being the limitations of not having that. It would be nice to have a really old drum machine, because they have such cool different sounds and you write differently with that. I have different basses and I write differently on a different instrument. Makes of a bass are like different instruments and you can write different songs with them. So I just try to build. Then I put it away and keep coming back to things I like and see what I can do with those things and try to surprise myself by having things to come back to that I don’t quite remember. Then when I hear them, I usually hear one new thing—“Why isn’t there that?” and “Oh I’ll add that.” I usually have 5 or 6 songs writing at once. Then you start to think about them lyrically—“What am I saying in this song?” It’s all about listening, because I believe the song is there, from the beginning. That first feeling really contains the entire song. If you just keep listening to that very first feeling from the first bass riff, the whole thing is there.
How do you associate ethics with music? What issues do you focus on?
Joe: Punk rock, and the Marx Brothers, and Buster Keaton, taught me to say something. The things that had a real effect on me made me want to be involved in a band that was going to say something. Even though there were a lot of things that I didn’t ever think about playing with Ian, when he asked me to play, I thought, I know this is somebody who has something to say. That made me want to play with him. Of all the idiotic reasons about what was cool about a band, I didn’t really think about playing with Ian. On another level I knew that was something extremely important. As I got to the music I saw we looked at music very similarly.
I don’t have some big agenda. It’s what I see and what it is to be human. We need to relate to each other. The songs help people realize we are all the same and we are all made of the same stuff. I really do think it’s the same mind. I don’t think that we are ever really alone. We are talking about problems that might freak us out. If it’s sadness, we are talking about taking things hard. There’s nothing you have felt that a trillion others haven’t felt in the passing of time. But I think when we talk about any issue, about government or what’s the situation where you live or what your child’s school is like, we are really talking about human relations. The revolution is about the revolution of the mind. Things are never going to get better until people take the time to look at themselves. But as soon as they can put other people aside for their agenda and their belief, people are gonna keep hiring people who will work for three cents and all that shit. It’s a very difficult thing for me to talk about, because it’s not organized into a simple thing and I’m not affiliated with anything. I don’t believe in anything in particular. I believe in everything that is. I believe that we are all here and alive and that it’s right here in front of us and we should fucking take it seriously and figure it out.
Not that I don’t like to laugh. If I didn’t see humor in just about everything, I’d never be able to fucking deal with this shit. As I get older I think about all the shit that I got angry about when I was young, all the shit I didn’t understand, I still don’t understand. I’m still pissed about it. I still think there’s a bunch of fucking assholes that take advantage of a lot of other people. If you want to talk about politics, politics is bullshit. It’s a game, a word game between people with power, who know how to put off getting anything done because they can fucking go home and play golf. Those people got it made. Those people are set. I don’t know why they don’t figure out things for all of the generations of their families to come. I don’t know why they don’t take it more seriously to do something, but it probably has nothing to do with them. They’re like actors who get the part.
I don’t know what I have to say really. Stay tuned for the next bunch of songs. And the songs aren’t enough. I can’t explain everything I want to say in those songs. What comes out is probably a feeble attempt in the end. If it goes with the construction with the song and it says enough, then maybe somehow people will believe what I want to think about. I want us to meditate on that. I believe people go to play music and put out records and the intention is more important than the actual words that are written down. That’s part of it. If you didn’t put a lot behind what it took you to do it, nobody would come see you again. I see people play man and they are communicating something to me. That’s been communicated to me since those first shows when I was ten. What’s being said is through a form of communication that is not available elsewhere. It comes across in music. That’s why we love music. Magazines, radio stations, TV shows where you choose the band, it doesn’t mean dick compared to going to see some show in a sweaty shitty little box and being affected by someone playing their instrument and meaning it. It’s a whole other thing. I hope we figure it all out and find what’s around us to be extremely important. I suppose these are the things I want to say in my songs. If we don’t find everything around us extremely important and sacred, then everything will disappear.
On a much lighter note, what are your favorite artists?
Joe: That’s pretty huge. In France, I was playing with this woman and this band that brought us on tour with them. Her name was Chiara Locardi, she plays for a band named L’Enfance Rouge. She really has such an original style. She was such a wonderful bass player to watch. I love Billy Cox who played with Hendrix. My favorite Hendrix stuff is when Billy Cox was playing with him. I’m more of a guitar head. My bass playing is more informed by guitar. I love Jah Wobble and Peter Hook. They really convinced me that “Shit, I can do this!”. They showed me I only needed a riff or two, that it wasn’t as hard as I imagined it might be. Rick Danko from The Band. Of course I love Paul McCartney. I dislike a lot of sappy things about McCartney, but his playing is hard to beat. Larry Graham’s playing in Sly & The Family Stone and whoever played after Larry left sounded great. I love Hendrix, and Jimmy Page, and an old friend of mine Scott Weinrich, Wino, who played in The Obesessed. Ronny Lane from Small Faces. I love Beefheart and there’s billions of things I love. Nina Simone I love. There’s something about Nina Simone that crosses all grounds. She informs one’s instrument too. She informs my bass and my songwriting. I don’t know, maybe she informs everything throughout your life. She really hits deeply.
