Channels "Open" (DeSoto)
By Tim Den
Thursday. Aug 19, 12:43 PM
An interview with song craftsman J. Robbins about his present life as a married man, the current state of music, and – for the first time – the ending of Burning Airlines.

Role model, musical visionary, down-to-earth bro bro… a lot of descriptions come to mind when I think of J. Robbins. Some might know him best as the former leader of Jawbox/Burning Airlines or as an engineer/producer extraordinaire, but to me the past doesn’t hold a candle to Channels, his new band and possibly best work to date.

In this exclusive chat, J. reveals – for the first time – the ending of Burning Airlines, his present life as a married man, the current state of music, and of course the sort of steadfast integrity and honesty that we’ve come to expect from him.

So first things first: Burning Airlines broke up for a while before any formal announcements were made. Could you take us through a timeline?

Well, we didn't so much break up as take a break from which we never returned.

I guess we went on that break around November of 2001, at the end of a short tour on the east coast. We had invited our friends in the Japanese band Naht to come to the U.S. and tour with us – a way of trying to return the favor they had extended to us (and many other DC area bands) in Japan. We did a bunch of shows with them and New End Original, and the shows really did poorly – I think this was a blow to us because we really wanted to make it a big tour for them…

Everyone was still reeling from the 9/11 attacks and the turnouts SUCKED, especially in NYC (a band named Burning Airlines was bound to suffer around then I guess)... Naht stayed with us for the first half (the northeast) then we went down to Florida, which had always been a stronghold for us, and it sucked worse! 20 people at shows where we used to sell out... we were getting really demoralized because we also felt that we were at our very best as a live band and only getting better.

And then the sort of internal difficulties started to really come to the foreground: the four of us had different ideas about where we were headed, in that I think the rest of the guys really wanted to do the "road warrior" thing and were striving to make the band bigger and more successful, whereas my experience in Jawbox really led me to think of that kind of thinking as a trap. My favorite bands and the music that has had the biggest impact on me has really all come from obscurity and people making art on their own terms. There were (and are) way too many 20-something post-whatever rock bands out there consciously striving to "make it," for us to start thinking we should be competing with them for anyone's attention, and that's definitely what we were doing. It's like The Mekons thinking they have to outsell New Found Glory.

I would rather grow my own garden, so to speak, and if people find it and it's useful to them, then the right kind of connection has been made, rather than turning it into more of a product and cramming it in everyone's faces. Which of course causes a conflict, because anyone would be right to say, "cramming it in people's faces is the only way to get anyone to pay attention.” But at this point for me that's a zero-sum game.

So anyway, at the end of the Florida tour on the second-to-last show, we had a big blow-up – my first ever full-on band fight – about directions to the venue (obviously with all this underlying stuff in the mix)! Once we cooled down we decided that a break was in order... and we never came back from the break. A few months later (Mike) Harbin (bassist/backup vocalist) and I were talking and were like, "uh I guess the band's pretty much broken up, eh?" So we called everyone. But no fanfare: what would be the point? Bands break up all the time. It's one of the things you can do in a band: break up!

"Break Up Your Band" is one of my favorite Chavez songs too.

The announcement was made via DeSoto's website... supposedly before you and the band approved it?

Yeah, I seem to remember Kim forced the issue a bit by doing that. But I think it was really impossible at that point for me to imagine getting together in a room with those guys to play music, which is doubly harsh because I love those guys... so, it was definitely time to move on. Just took a long time to admit it.

I was on the Electrical Audio website the other night, where they play this game called "Crap/Not Crap" – do you know it? Anyway, it's a forum where they post topics for discussion ranging from nü-metal to cultural phenomena like "the ubiquitous use of the word 'amazing'." The participants rate the subject "crap" or not... apparently Burning Airlines is "crap," but only by a fairly narrow margin. Glad they had the time to talk it over.

I understand that, while in Burning Airlines, there was a conflict of schedules between writing/practicing with the band and your own recording/producing jobs... was that ever a big problem?

Constantly.

If that's the case, then how do you expect Channels to handle the balance?

It's a different dynamic in Channels: there isn't the remotest interest in "making it" the way there was (unadmitted at the time) in BA... my wife Janet (Morgan) is the bass player and she has a full-time job, our drummer Darren (Zentek) has a full-time job and a mortgage to pay, and he was through the touring mill with Kerosene 454... this band is all about how much fun it is to make music, not about meeting any real or imagined schedule or quota. It's a thing much more unto itself.

Which makes it enough fun that I want to do it all the time and thereby there's STILL a conflict with my work... but what a great complaint to have.

How much touring did Jawbox do overall, would you say?

TONS. For a while back there, it was like eight-to-10 months out of the year.

How were you able to afford that, financially?

Barely. We all lived together, and Kim was an extraordinary manager of time and money, so we never actually lost money on a tour: not even on our first. But even when we signed to Atlantic, which was sort of supposed to be like the proverbial ship coming in, it was poverty-line all the way for me. It paid for its own continuance, and it was all I wanted to do – touring and making music was THE gateway to experience, to going out and meeting the world and growing (I know it sounds corny but it's totally true). Things have certainly changed in that regard – I feel like I am learning as much or more by staying home and playing attention to different things.

Would you recommend heavy touring to younger bands/musicians?

Absolutely. I think peoople know if they've got it in them. It obviously can't appeal to everyone. But I didn't have any reason to want to stay home: I wanted to go out and see the world. Sounds like I'm talking about the fuckin' Navy.

But do you think that today's musical climate would be as kind to smart bands such as Jawbox as the early-'90s were? Back then, there was still some sort of a loyal "underground" movement… it's all about hype, fashion, and catering to prepubescents now, even in the underground.

I can't guess... it's a very different world and I'm not so attuned to it, just by virtue of my age. I am more tuned into my friends and what they're doing, everybody's little garden that they're growing. Touring seems like more of an industry to me now that I'm not doing it all the time… a lot of givens, not so much a sense of discovery. But I think if I were in my 20s, and Jawbox was just starting, I'd still sort of go out there and give it everything I had just for the experience. I don't think we expected any degree of "success" when we did it then and that's not how I'd want to think about it now... it's always a Quixotic venture.

Andy Partridge had a great line in this old XTC song: "There's no Youth Culture, only masks they let you rent." How badass is that?

What differentiates Channels' music from your earlier bands?

Well, it's sort of... easier in a way, even though I have been told (by Kim Coletta, no less) that it's the least accessible music I've ever been involved in. It just has an easier feeling, more flow or something. Janet's voice makes it pretty different: her voice is so cool, I almost want her to sing all the time so I could just play guitar. But she is even more nervous and self-critical about writing lyrics than I am.

I don't think it's a huge stylistic departure for me in one way – it's not like we're this alt-country band or something – but it just sort of feels more... positive or something. It's like all the time in bands up till now I've been trying to convince myself that there are no stakes, nothing to think about but the music… but not totally believing it, always worrying and second-guessing. Now I really do believe it, there are no stakes except to enjoy it for its own sake, and it's so much fun. Which I think comes through, I hope. A lot of it is Darren – theses awesome drum lines just flow out of him... he's my hero.

That's definitely the feeling I get as well... except Kim's opinion, of course. I think it's the most accessible material you've ever written. Pure songwriting, dressed interestingly.

It's also really cool to be in this band with Janet, who is incredibly musical but who is doing a lot of this band-type stuff for the first time. It makes it fresh for me too. Like... we took our band photos ourselves with Janet's polaroid in the practice space, and I was thinking back to the Jawbox days when we had to hire a photographer. Even when we were on Dischord we did that. Why? It's like hearing everything through fresh ears. It's good.

And is playing live and pursuing Channels as a "performing" entity important to all of you?

It remains to be seen how important it is. We've had a lot of fun playing shows so far (all four of them), but I don't know if the songs come across as well live as they do recorded. Our first couple of shows were pretty shaky, I think. We have been practicing a lot so that, when we do play live, the songs will come across as well as they can, and we’ve invited Ryan Nelson to come along and play guitar, keys, and percussion on stuff we can't do as a trio. So I guess, obviously playing the songs well live matters a lot. But "pursuing' it – we all agreed that we'd be most into pursuing cool experiences through the band, rather than just trying to play a lot of shows or something. Quality of experience is what it's all about.
www.jrobbins.net/channels/index.htm
www.desotorecords.com

Tim Den

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