Chas Smith

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 20 Jun 2004 10:12 pm

Chas neglected to post this interesting article from this week's L. A. Weekly magazine.
See it with the photos (recommended) at: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=54416

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L. A. Weekly
JUNE 18 - 24, 2004
Vibrate Yourself
Chas Smith’s metal — heavy and otherwise
by Greg Burk
Good vibrations: Chas Smith
makes beautiful music out of
heavy metals.
(Photo by Gregory Bojorquez)
Chas Smith makes beautiful music and striking visual art out of metal.
The art’s impact springs straight from its functionality: The material that carries the sound glows with an intrinsically attractive sheen, and music is all about relationships — proportional sequences of notes in a scale that can strike the eye as well as the ear with a special grace. Think of the strings of a harp, or the tubes of a vibraphone. Smith’s approach, though, is more modern. His instruments’ look is about the sensuality of the machine.
As for Smith’s music, it isn’t beautiful like Patsy Cline singing “I Fall to Pieces,” though being an old steel-guitar player, he can definitely get behind that. Instead, the beauty seems to have existed before Smith located and presented it, seems to have existed before humankind.
The effect comes from vibrations, and how one thing vibrating can coax vibrations from other things, including your inner ear. Smith builds his instruments to exploit the natural relations between vibrations.
“I write very simple music,” he says, “and then complicate the sounds. The foregrounds don’t do a hell of a lot. The backgrounds are what’s moving.” That’s what makes it art instead of physics. “The music’s in the details.”
Smith’s music is physical. It’s like wind; you can feel it. There are audible shapes, too, always changing, like the blobs in a lava lamp. Timbres, from harsh shivers to womb-deep throbs, stretch out in limitless gradations. The music doesn’t claw for your attention. You can fixate on it, meditate on it or ignore it altogether — the music doesn’t care. It will remain, even after you’re gone.

(Photos by Debra DiPaolo)

Way out in the Valley, Smith lives in a ranch-style house with his metal. There are big sheets of government-surplus titanium. (“Magic stuff. Your tax dollars bought that for me.”) There are wire rods and metal aerospace tubing, which he can saw into resonating lengths. There are Dobros and steel guitars. Metal everywhere. Even his girlfriend is named Steele.
Except for the screeching of his cockatiel, it’s quiet, until Smith demonstrates some of his surreal, geometrically impressive creations. He knocks big things with a mallet in precise locations, generating different tones and long-sustaining wooows. He applies a violin bow to smaller things, setting their interrelationships in perpetual motion: “Go out, put your clothes in the dryer, come back, and it’s still resonating.” Bell-like elongations, ghostly feedback, edgy whines.
It’s all junk, more or less. That’s one of his rules: Use leftover stuff. He indicates a big metal case, part of one instrument.
“This used to be a hard-drive storage. It bonged against the door, and hmm, it made some kind of interesting sounds. I hung it up and hit it a few times with a screwdriver.” His neighbor has 14 dogs. “They started goin’ crazy, and I went, ‘****, man, I’m on to somethin’ here.’”
Smith talks in quick bursts of shrug-it-off vernacular. Originally from Massachusetts, he’s also lived in Louisiana and Georgia, but now sounds pretty much like any middle-aged Valley dude.
“I feel like I fit in really well,” he says. “I’ve had an I.Q. drop. What’s that bumper sticker? ‘If you act like a shithead, they’ll treat you as an equal.’”

A music lover first and always, Smith picked up welding and drafting skills along the way. So while he’s in steady demand for film sounds (Finding Nemo, The Road to Perdition, The Shawshank Redemption) and movie tech (he shared an Oscar for creating a motion-controlled camera crane), he also gets calls from visual artists such as Jonathan Borofsky and Nancy Rubins to realize their concepts for big metal things — today he’s just polished off a 15-foot-tall table for Paul McCarthy. His metal movers include a forklift and a carrying cart, but hell, all this crap looks heavy. How’s his back?
“****ed up. I spend a fortune in chiropracty.” Further damage: Smith’s limbs are streaked with welding burns. No sweat, though; he grows aloe plants. When he gets a cut or a scorch, he just whacks off a green spear and scrapes juice on the wound.
At least he’s still got all his fingers. “Well, this one’s grown back. I got it caught in a circular sander in 1972. So I went to the foreman — ‘Whagh!’ He went over backward. That pretty much finished the piano.” Smith’s mom thought he’d be Mozart Jr.; he himself leaned more toward Bill Evans, after first being diverted by Link Wray’s “Rumble.” Today, his 1893 Steinway pretty much serves as a shelf.
Looking for new fields to plow, the nine-fingered Smith left Boston’s Berklee College of Music to try electronic music at CalArts, where he studied in the ’70s with Morton Subotnick. He preferred the more versatile Serge synths to the Buchlas that Subotnick wrangled, and kept hunting for ways to make “pretty” music on them — an unfashionable idea that was about to become fashionable.

“If you listen to it now,” says Smith, not completely embarrassed, “it’s kinda New Agey.”

When it all shook down, though, Smith realized that oscillators weren’t pushing his buttons, and he returned to the principles of the steel guitar as stroked by his hero, Joaquin Murphy: You can’t beat metal vibrating. Most of his self-built instruments are too bulky and fragile to move, but some are just greatly augmented guitars, like the electrified, vertical- filamented Guitarzilla, which he hauled out to a multiperformer evening of weird guitar music at Eagle Rock’s Center for the Arts in May. His tones, wafting across the austere mission-style space, were like the solemn chords of a distant cathedral organ, except the experience didn’t seem to be music at all, so much as a state of mind. It was like that time just before dying, when you might be offered a moment of clarity to make peace with your life, beyond judgment.
If you wonder how a cowboy like Chas Smith gets to a place like that, well, it’s not by being a media maven. He just goes out to his workshop or his studio to build stuff or record one of his excellent albums (another Cold Blue release is due in the fall), and stays there for weeks at a time. When he travels, he dreams of home.

“I haven’t had a TV since 1972. What this place gives me is a chance to exercise my skills. And to me, that’s about the most enjoyable thing that you can do. I get to be who I am here. The thing grows, and it either works or it doesn’t. A young man came out, and he said, ‘That must be really great. You spend a couple hundred hours, build a thing, and it goes ding!’ And I said, ‘No no no. You should see all the ones that went thunk.’” The disappointments are okay. They’re part of the process, and the process is the thing.
So, some people get bored with their lives? Smith is dismayed to hear of it. “If you don’t like your reality, you’re the ****in’ one to change it. We create our own realities.”
The Sound series presents Chas Smith, Jim Fox, Michael Jon Fink and Rick Cox at the Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, on Saturday, June 26, at 7:30 p.m.; www.soundnet.org/sound/2004
.[This message was edited by Earnest Bovine on 20 June 2004 at 11:17 PM.]

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 21 Jun 2004 5:17 am

Extremely cool!!

Chas sent me some pics of his instruments he built. They are just incredible. We are talking about a rare bird here!

Rick Aiello · Post by **Rick Aiello** » 21 Jun 2004 5:19 am

Very, very

!!!!!

------------------

www.horseshoemagnets.com

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 21 Jun 2004 6:13 am

Hey Chas, if you're watching, you should record some oscilating pieces and try and get Ipecac Records interested, they've done releases on ambient-grunge, techno-grind, hillbilly, mash-up electronica, new age and all sorts.
As far as I know they're Hollywood (or at least L.A.) based and online.

These guys would take a serious look at anything experimental, really.

Greg Vincent · Post by **Greg Vincent** » 21 Jun 2004 7:24 am

Way to go, Chas!

Brandin · Post by **Brandin** » 21 Jun 2004 7:50 am

That was a ****in' great article!

GB

Rick Schmidt · Post by **Rick Schmidt** » 21 Jun 2004 8:26 am

Awesome Chas! We on the Forum salute you!

Thanks for posting this Earnest...you're next

Rick

Rich Weiss · Post by **Rich Weiss** » 21 Jun 2004 10:31 am

Good article, Chas. BTW, I heard you being interviewed on NPR last month. You did a great job describing what you liked about the sound of the steel guitar.

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 21 Jun 2004 6:38 pm

Gentleman, thank you. Jason, I appreciate the input, but I've been on Cold Blue for over 20 years and inspite of the fact that none of us has made any money, there's a certain amount of inertia and resistance to leaving. Actually, I had a major label sniffing my leg, but I would have had to give up my publishing and I wasn't willing to do that. If I'm not going to make any money, I at least want to own my own work.

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 2 Aug 2004 7:10 am

Chas, I missed this one.
I suppose one thing that Ipecac does, they seem to do one-off deals of albums they like, sometimes a compilation of rare material by the artist they did.

They don't delete albums either, they aren't a major, although they have a pretty good network of distro (Caroline Records for the US of A and UK, Shock Records in Australasia) and so on.
I doubt they'd want you to give up your publishing, Jerry Wakefield recorded for them, they put out the brilliant Lucky Stars LP back in 2000, so he might have some input if you know him well enough to ask.

I personally think an album on IPC would probably do more for positive exposure for you and Cold Blue that you'd expect from a label.
I have a lot of faith and love for these guys, they've brought me some rare and weird gems for my collection.

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 2 Aug 2004 7:12 am

Chas, if you ever want to get in touch, some good soul like Mike Perlowin has may email and could no doubt hook us up.

(is that okay Mike?)

regards

Jason

Bob Hoffnar · Post by **Bob Hoffnar** » 2 Aug 2004 7:32 am

And he is a handsome devil too !

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Bob
intonation help

Dave Boothroyd · Post by **Dave Boothroyd** » 2 Aug 2004 7:47 am

Hey Chas,
Is there any way I could get hold of some photographs and more importantly, some sounds of the devices you build? Do I have yopur permission to use the pictures above?
I shall have a new group of final year students in four weeks or so and my main task this year is to knock them off centre, show them how wide the world of music is. They grow up in hairbreadth genres of Rock or Punk or Rap or Trance etc. My first task is to get them to listen to sounds, and know that underneath it all, that is where music starts.
The fact that you are working directly with sound producing materials rather than electronics would be a great input. I'd ask you over as a guest lecturer, but the travelling would be a bit much!
Cheers
Dave
[This message was edited by Dave Boothroyd on 02 August 2004 at 08:49 AM.]

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 2 Aug 2004 8:53 am

Hey Dave,

Of course. RE: electronics, I spent 5 years working with the Buchla 200 and then another 7 or so, with my Serge. So I have an appreciation for synthesizers, but when it's all mixed down, it always sounds electronic. Acoustic, or "natural" sounds, to my ears, always sound more complex and interesting.

I have 3 cds out on Cold Blue,
http://www.coldbluemusic.com/

and the 1st one, Nikko Wolverine, has photos in the booklet of most of the instruments and is a collection of pieces composed over 6 years that includes a couple for steel guitar, one long tone, one traditional.

The 2nd cd, Aluminum Overcast, is a more through-composed album that exploits the instruments. The 3rd cd, An Hour Out of Desert Center, is primarily steel guitar generated and is available here on the Forum.

Cheers,
Chas

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 2 Aug 2004 9:11 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> Jerry Wakefield recorded for them, they put out the brilliant Lucky Stars LP back in 2000, so he might have some input if you know him well enough to ask.

I personally think an album on IPC would probably do more for positive exposure for you and Cold Blue that you'd expect from a label<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Jason, I know Jeremy and Sage and they're really good guys, not to mention, that Jeremy is a great player. I'll look into IPC, but you have to remember that the kind of music that the Lucky Stars and The Radio Ranch Straight Shooters, do/did, is on the opposite end of the spectrum of what I compose. If you're driving around and humming the "melodies" from my tunes, your "pharmasist" is top shelf.

Greg Vincent · Post by **Greg Vincent** » 2 Aug 2004 2:41 pm

Hey Chas how did the Schindler House gig go? I showed up but it was sold out! You guys had a great turnout, I know that much. There were people in line to get on the WAITING LIST for tix!

When's your next gig?

-GV

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 2 Aug 2004 6:56 pm

Greg, it went very well, I think they said they turned away a couple hundred people. The audience was very warm and receptive. I spent the 2 weeks prior, rewriting and practicing my piece, 8 hrs a day and it payed off. I was using 3 real-time loopers and on one of them I had to sight-read into a 4 1/2 minute loop for 2 iterations, no room for a wrong button or note.

I'm sorry you missed it, Laura got my only comp ticket. The next one is probably in March, with The Ear Unit.

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 2 Aug 2004 6:57 pm

Dave, here's a few more photos:

Dave Boothroyd · Post by **Dave Boothroyd** » 2 Aug 2004 10:43 pm

I ordered Nikko Volverine from Cold Blue last night. Thanks for the pictures Chas. I'm really looking forward to hearing it.
Thanks again,
I teach the history and development of Synths too- so I'm familiar with the Buchla, but I've never seen a Serge in the flesh!, though I understand that they are both good sound design tools.
Cheers
Dave[This message was edited by Dave Boothroyd on 02 August 2004 at 11:45 PM.]

Jason Odd · Post by **Jason Odd** » 3 Aug 2004 7:10 am

Chas, let me explain Ipecac by example:

Melvins / Lustmord Catalog: IPC-054
Pigs of the Roman Empire Release: August 10, 2004
* Melvins with electronic pioneer Lustmord and the guitarist from Tool doing song intros as well.
From beaslty rock to ambient and well defined noise-ambience. Very, very special album.

Venomous Concept Catalog: IPC-051
Retroactive Abortion Release: June 29, 2004
* Brilliant punk-thrash supergroup.

End Catalog: IPC-049
The Sounds of Disaster Release: April 6, 2004
* Duane Eddy goes spaghetti western via a deejay mash-up with a noise band into samples, at least that's what this great surf-electric beat album sounds like.
Clint Eastwood as a rockabilly deejay on acid, somewhere inbetween all that I guess.

Bohren & Der Club of Gore Catalog:IPC-048
Black Earth Release: March 9, 2004
* Piano, sax ambient combo. Very special and slowcore.

Melvins Catalog: IPC-047
Neither Here Nor There (228 page book w/ CD) Release: March 9, 2004
* best of many art books I own, and a great retrospective CD on the band the Melvins, most of the work is about or done for the band over the last 20 years.

Fantômas Catalog: IPC-045
Delìrium Cordìa Release: January 27, 2004
* An ambient album of the highest quality.

Desert Sessions Catalog: IPC-044
Volume 9 & 10 Release: September 23, 2003
* All star stoner-rock combo, laid back and spacey.

The Curse of the Golden Vampire Catalog: IPC-042
Mass Destruction Release: June 2, 2003
* awesome blend of super speed drum & bass electronica and thrash grindcore. Jackhammer approach.

Mondo Generator Catalog: IPC-041
A Drug Problem That Never Existed Release: July 4, 2003
* big rock side band from the bassist of stoner-rock greats, the Queens of The Stoneage.

Tomahawk Catalog: IPC-040
Mit Gas Release: May 6, 2003
* More stripped down unreleanting sharp rock.

Kaada Catalog: IPC-037
Thank You For Giving Me Your Valuable Time Release: February 25, 2003
* Old doo wop and the like remixed and mutated by an electronic dude, this record is fantasic and funky like you would not belive.

Yoshimi & Yuka Catalog: IPC-034
Flower With No Color Release: April 8, 2003
* Japanese noise band veterans come together for an etheral Japanese folk-ambient record.
Simply gorgeous.

Moistboyz Catalog: IPC-033
III Release: September 3, 2002
* indie-rock allstar band, total redneck crazed cartoon grunt rock. Very silly, very loud and rockin'

Isis Catalog: IPC-032
Oceanic Release: September 17, 2002
* Brutal emo hardcore band, new album coming on IPC by end of the year.

Dälek Catalog: IPC-030
From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots Release: August 6, 2002
* what if rap was made by an alien metal band with no similarities towards Kid Rock.
The thinking man's destructo-rap if you like.

FantômasMelvins Big Band Catalog: IPC-019
Millennium Monsterwork
Live: New Year's Eve 2000 Release: April 2, 2002
* Another noise mutant live album, two bands with some similar members merge on this gig.

Tomahawk Catalog: IPC-018
Tomahawk Release: October 31, 2001
* Brutal razor sharp rock.

Fantômas Catalog: IPC-017
The Director's Cut Release: July 10, 2001
* Mutant rock band does film soundtracks, best ever version of the Godfather theme. Seriously.

eX-Girl Catalog: IPC-015
Back to the Mono Kero Release: May 15, 2001
* Japanese weird rock girl band, what else.

Melvins Catalog: IPC-014
Colossus of Destiny Release: April 17, 2001
* Noise experiental live album with deejay and mix guy warrping the tracks live.
Easy listening it ain't, but I dig it.

Eddie Def Catalog: IPC-013
Inner Scratch Demons Release: March 20, 2001 * Compilation of rare deejay sides, the most straight forward of the IPC electronica albums, and very good.

Melvins Catalog: IPC-012
Gluey Porch Treatments Release: November 28, 2000
* reissue of the Melvins ultra-grungey 1989 album with as many rare outakes and demos.

Neil Hamburger Catalog: IPC-010
Great Phone Calls Release: July 4, 2000
* weird phone prank album, comedy.

The Lucky Stars Catalog: IPC-008
Hollywood & Western Release: May 30, 2000
* the only country-roots or hillbilly release on IPC.

kid606 Catalog: IPC-007
Down With The Scene Release: June 20, 2000
* crazy electronica mash-up, noise and crazy beats.

The Kids of Widney High Catalog: IPC-005
Let's Get Busy Release: November 23, 1999
* kids from a special school singing project.
Folk label Rounder issued the first one of these back in 1989, now deleted. This one is a new group.

Melvins Catalog: IPC-006
The Crybaby Release: February 8, 2000 Melvins Catalog: IPC-004
The Bootlicker Release: August 24, 1999
Melvins Catalog: IPC-002
The Maggot Release: May 18, 1999
* Series on albums, a trilogy, ranging from mellow to weird-ass noise stuff.
Issued on a vinyl set as IPC-011
The Trilogy Vinyl Release: November 28, 2000

Fantômas Catalog: IPC-001
S/T Release: April 27, 1999
Experimental sound-grunge-rock meets art band approach.

* and there's a lot more, some artists are one-off deals as they have other labels, some are one-shot side bands, others have various releases, too many to list here.
They also devoted a part of their catalog to vinyl only releases.
A very classy open minded label.

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 3 Aug 2004 9:36 am

This is great stuff Chas. It reminds me of some stuff I ran into in Boston in the '80s. I had a friend from back in Mississippi, Joe Davis (from the Gulf Coast), who had an art fellowship at MIT (of all places). He made space art, meant to go up with satelites, etc. He had a peg leg, which he claimed came from an aligator fight, but I think really came from a Harley accident. I called him my peg-leg space artist buddy. He also made innovative instruments and played with a guy named Rottman in the Steel Cello Ensemble. Their instruments looked much like yours, but bigger and less complicated. I have an LP of theirs, but haven't kept up with them lately. Their music was somewhere between ethereal and industrial.

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 4 Aug 2004 10:15 am

Buchla, but I've never seen a Serge in the flesh!, though I understand that they are both good sound design tools.

Mort Subotnik brought Serge Tcherepnin out to Cal Arts to build a better, and more affordable, synthesizer. Serge's brother, Ivan, taught electronic music at Harvard and his father was a famous French composer. Ultimately, the Serge was a more versatile instrument, as far as patch-point analog instruments go, however, both were very impressive. Neither had a keyboard owing to the fact that 12-tone tuning systems were an anathema to electronic music.

chas smith R.I.P. · Post by **chas smith R.I.P.** » 4 Aug 2004 10:33 am

Jason, thank you for the list. The conflict, for me, is that all of the listings are 'pop forms' , which is not what I do. By the same token, Desert Center, was primarily tonal and "friendly" and we were concerned that it would be percieved as New Age, which would be the kiss-of-death for my credibility as a "serious" composer.

The first review, out of the UK, was essentially '....what is this crap? Has Cold Blue gone New Age?.....' and on and on '...it was so much better when he was banging away on his instruments...'

Then the second review was basically '....finally some music where he's not banging away on his instruments....' Lose one, gain one. It did open up a new audience and Steve Roach carries it in his catalog.