Cross Our Hearts! Liar's Club Is Back!
Having attended the same High School in Tacoma, Washington at slightly different times, Jayson Jarmon, Scott McPherson, and Kevo X.Thompson finally ran across each other in the late 80's and began the musical venture known as Liar's Club. Their early days of programmed rhythms and driving beats led to adding drummer John Vangen, which created a purer pop sound over the acts next two releases culminating with 1994's classic DROP DEAD, one of the finest pop albums of the 90's! Along the way this multi-songwriter act even garnered some radio attention in the Pacific Northwest with the clever word play song 'Espresso Girl', from 1990's HEADFUL OF STARS album, that featured a glorious bombardment of lines like 'thanks a-latte', and 'you're perky now and you're perky later', over an ever so cute melody: a gem to be sure. But after 4 releases (including '93's EVOLUTION 9, and their earliest cassette only WHERE SINNERS MEET ), The Liar's Club lived up to their last album's title and ceased to be.... or so it seemed.........
Because as it turns out, this story was NOT in fact over in '94. As Jayson and Scott have returned (minus Thompson and Vangen) with an all new version of Liar's Club, featuring 4 new members. With the new record, SENSATION, nearly finished, Pop Palace decided to get the scoop on the project. And were able to tear Scott and Jayson away from the studio just long enough for a little Q & A session. Because the rumors were driving us nuts!
So to start things, what have each of you been up to for the last 6 years?
Jayson: Started an internet company with the engineer and designer who worked with us on DROP DEAD. Now it's one of the largest privately-held internet development companies in the world. While I long for those days of sleeping on the floor with the band in LA, I have been busy doing the "responsible' businessman/daddy thing. I have been musically idling, with the exception of playing 4 or 5 live shows with Liar's Club on various occasions in Seattle.
Scott: I put out a cd called HASTE with a bunch of extremely talented pals. I also tried my hand at writing big band ballads, and country pop (for shits and giggles). I thought publishing songs might be fun. Oh, found a swell girl and we made a little boy "Quinn" (my best work to date). By the way, if you'd like to sample HASTE : www.mp3.com/haste1
So, fill us in... What brought the Liar's Club back together?
Jayson: There was a feeling....... I think we both had..... that our best record was still in front of us. We both grew up a little, settled down, had kids, started businesses....but that record was still out there somewhere. We got together for a couple of xmas shows at Seattle's Showbox Theater, and blammo, it was still there. I think the time apart helped us develop a keener sense of mutual respect. But ultimately I think we wanted to get those songs out. It's a little like blue-balls or something.
So is the new record a return, or a reunion of sorts?
Jayson: It's a return in the sense that it's a return to Liar's Club's core strengths: song-craft, production, love of pop. It's a reunion in the sense that I think we all love each other and missed working together.
Scott: We just needed a break for awhile so as to explode with out best effort later, which is now!
Jayson: I have always maintained that Scott McPherson is the best songwriter I have ever met and it is always a pleasure and a privilege to work with him musically. We're like Steve and Edie or something.
And how have each of you grown musically, in the time apart? And how will this alter what we hear on the coming record?
Scott: Jay and I have both grown up quite a bit, and we respect each other's idea's and direction in a much better way now. It's all very laid back.
Jayson: I think it's intensified the personal dimensions of the songs... you know, as a pop band there's a tendency to write about cars and girls. We each have more source material from experience. I think that music also is an even more important escape for us. I spend my everyday life as the president of a 600 person-company. I think there's a million stories there alone. I'm also sensing something about being from Tacoma bubbling in all of this lately. Scott and I have the same roots, a lot of the same pop sense, a lot of shared experience musically and otherwise. In Tacoma, being involved in the arts has always fostered a sort of a "garrison" response among the artists. You have to be pretty tough, and you have to stick together.
Scott: As far as how it will alter what you hear on the new one... Well? that's funny really.. because 60% of the new cd SENSATION was written 6 years ago. As for "growth"? Plenty! We've had much more time to mature and absorb a lot more variety of music that's floating around us. Not to mention growth in the way of studio production and technique (which we have both tinkered with over the years). I can safely say that this record will be- by far and away -light years ahead of DROP DEAD and I thought that might be hard to do, we are all really proud of that record and we wouldn't have minded had we ended it with that. But I think Jay has offered his best material to date with this coming record, and he seems to dig my new stuff as well. We usually split the song writing duties right down the middle and we have much more co-written stuff between us this time too.
Is the excitement of doing this new record, similar, or different to how it was when you guys FIRST started putting songs to tape years ago?
Jayson: I'm more excited than ever, but it's based on the strength of the material as opposed to the novelty of going into a recording studio. The studio can be Nirvana or the gas chamber depending on who you're in there with and the quality of the material. I think this is, pardon the expression, Nirvana. Still, there's nothing like working late into the night, working on a little demo in the home studio. It's always exciting to hear it come together.
Scott: We have some new players with this project too, so there is a new and exciting chemistry definitely. Our bass player Kevo X. Thompson now lives in the UK/London and our past drummer John Vangen is raising a small army of children with his new wife, so we've enlisted drummer extraordinaire - Dana Simms (the man of a thousand bands) and our long time highschool pal Sean Gaffney on bass (also a great vocalist, guitar player and damned good mouth harp operator). So in a way.. Yeah! It's all kinda brand new, yet with a very comfortable feel. When we first started recording we had no flipping clue! Well, now we have a good handle on that CLUE and we intend to kick it's fat ass all over the place.
So what about your new band members? Other than sterling musicianship, do your new additions possess any other special skills?
Scott: Dana Simms can basically do the impossible, he can at any given moment play drums with as many as 67 bands "at the same time!" Science can not explain this phenomenon, nor can Liar's Club. One night we were playing in Seattle's Pioneer Squard district and also that same night Dana was on tour in Nome, Alaska with a band called "Crime Family" and also somewhere in Chicago playing with a cover band called "Footloose and The Fancy Freeze". It's fricken crazy man but it works so.. there ya go.
Jayson: Dana can also cause objects to move by concentration alone. Jim our keyboard player can talk depressed people off of building ledges. And Sean our bass player is into puppets. No really, puppets....
Scott: Ventriloquism. Sean claims his puppet is actually doing the talking himself. We've all personally asked (Mr Pickles) privately if this were true but there was no comment. Oh, and our new side guitar guy (big hair and all). Paul Shille can juggle 5 bowling pins and a live monkey at the same time.. unusually gifted.
Jayson: Paul can ALSO move objects by concentration alone. It's very strange.
What about you guys? Surely there are some hidden talents within.
Scott: Jay has a wonderful talent of making millions of dollars off the internet, and then of course gambling it away on the horses, chicks and booze. Sometimes he and I both believe that we are both channeling the ghost of Frank Sinatra. It's weird, I'll start saying words like "Broads, groovy, doo be doo" or ending sentences with "I'll kick your ass my friend". And Jay is constantly fading in and out of conversations with dialogue from the film "Oceans Eleven", yet he's completely unaware of this. It's just... creepy... ya know?
Jayson: But my real talent is impersonating Al Stewart.
So in the 12 years you've known each other, what's the weirdest experience the two of you have shared together?
Jayson: We were down talking to labels in Hollywood and we snuck onto the Fox lot. We got caught and the front gate guard threatened to 'snap our necks like we were chickens'...
Speaking of your experiences together, how do each of you look back now on the 3 CD's
you made?
Scott: The first record HEADFUL OF STARS was really a crash course in 'studio reality'. And also an introduction to song writing(I think). There's a few good tunes on there though. I personally LOVE Jay's song 'Paddywhack' (a brilliant piece) and of course 'Hanky Panky' (which I wrote when I was 19)
Jayson: EVOLUTION 9 is totally analog: just drums and wires; basically our live sound at that time. Good songs, good vocals.
Scott: EVOLUTION 9 was an experiment in the basics. We didn't want any sort of keyboards or programming at all! In fact just the opposite of HEADFUL... But again, just a stepping stone to the next project DROP DEAD.
Jayson: Which was punchier and a little more luscious, also stronger material and more mature songwriting. It's like a big creamy, pop pie!
Scott: DROP DEAD was very ambitious from the get go, we spent a long time in the studio with that one (had a lot of fun too).Our songs had improved 10 fold by this time, and I think we sorta brain stormed through-out as far as the album concept goes (mostly Jay's idea)
Jayson: The theme for DROP DEAD came from a Memorial Day visit to the cemetery. It got me thinking about artists never being appreciated until they were dead. I envisioned portraying Liar's Club as a band so pathetic, that they would fake their own deaths just to get attention. And believe me, as a pop band in Seattle in the early 90's, you had to get attention any way you could. I can't speak for everybody, but at the time I had the feeling it was the last record and a very appropiate title indeed.
Over those years, what kind of phases did the songs generally go through before the final mixing process?
Scott: Back in the day - Usually the song's were completely written and arranged by either Jay or myself and introduced to the band. Everyone added their part(s) and we rehearsed on stage and off, then it was off to the studio. But, it's not the way so much now.
Jayson: We play AR guy for each other, picking each other's best stuff, suggesting changes and arrangements. We rehearse 'em up and lay 'em down. We're not the kind of band that jams and writes some lyrics to sit on top of a riff. We are really into writing discreet songs. (Hippie voice).It's about the songs, man!!
Scott: Also, for this disc we intend to probably exchange vocal duties for songs written by the other.It should be fun. By the time we hit the studio, the tune usually has taken on a permanent personality.
How important is the running order to you, when deciding how a record is laid out?
Jayson: Really important. I usually do this for the band, and I've had some hits and misses. Scott recently changed the running order of our last album DROP DEAD by placing 'Cinnamon Smiles' first..changed the whole mood, a definite improvement. We like to mix up the moods, the tempos, the voices, the perspectives of the songs, everything. We've never gone so far as writing a concept album where the whole thing tells a story, but Liar's Club has always been about pop variety, and we like to show that in the running orders.
Scott: I don't want to give away too much, but the layout, design, concept and packaging is extrememly important! And much more so with SENSATION. I think a lot of people are going to love the new concept. Yet, many Mother's of teenage daughters will not get it at all. It should be laugh riots, and Liar's Club intends to laugh all the way to the bank (Kidding!). Mixing moods are important too and it seems in the past we have always started a record with a rip-rocking tune and kept to a formula, but the new one is going to have a whole new spin on it.
Well, I know many who are looking forward to SENSATION. When can we expect it?
Scott: Keep checking our temp website at www.mp3.com/liarsclub and we will keep you updated. At the moment it's looking more like late July or August/2000
Any plans to gig the disc outside of Washington and Oregon?
Jayson: I think we can do the West Coast at least.. However, it would be a distinct pleasure to play in any receptive venue anywhere. Who knows? with a little success, we could take the show on the road, boys!!
(Bonanza Theme Music here...........)