It wasn't until the mastering stage that I could feel some pride and pat myself on the back a little bit. At this point though it's still a mystery. I really just wanted to make a cool-sounding record for Grandaddy fans. I'm excited to get it into the hands of those people, so that it will be out of my hands. So would you say you made this album for the fans? They definitely played a huge part. I feel a solidarity with them, like I'm very similar to a lot of the people that have connected with this music.
When I feel like something is working, I often think it will resonate with someone else. I'm not completely at the mercy what I think might be the opinions of other people. It's more straddling what feels right to me and what I think a Grandaddy fan might get a kick out of.
One thing I think every fan will enjoy is the return of Jed. What made you bring back that character? If there was any pandering that happened on this album that was the moment. It's something I had laying around, and if you'll notice it's only a couple of minutes long. I think it may have originally been a joke, so I had to really talk myself into fleshing it out and turn it into an actual piece of music.
More than anything, it's like a couple of friends who meet up at the bar and talk about the old days. Like, "What happened to this person? Or that person? What's he up to? I was more just touching on the matter for a bit. You had worked with him on Dark Night of the Soul. What made you decide to sign with him? We actually go way back. He's been a Grandaddy fan for a very long time. He knows the albums really well. He's a real super nerdy music fan. And we've hung out many times as friends and had discussions about music and life and any number of things.
I feel like there is a lot I don't need to explain to him. I'm not really fond of having to meet new industry people and explain myself, and I don't feel I need to do that with Brian [Burton]. I definitely benefit from that aspect.
If he's a big fan, did he reach out at all and ask to work on the album? No, as a matter of fact, when I was first plotting out how I was going to make this record I was considering working on it with somebody else.
But I reached out to him and I had a few recordings already that he asked to hear about. He said he was busy working on a few things already, but also that he felt the songs I sent him were fine.
He encouraged me to keep going and he really gave me some confidence because I didn't know if I was up to the task of overseeing, engineering, producing and doing most of the work myself. I read Last Place is the first of at least two new Grandaddy albums? Yeah, we signed a deal for two albums, so we do know there will be at least one more, which is exciting. Cam Lindsay is a writer living in up in Toronto.
Follow him on Twitter. But here he is, in Montana, sitting amid unpacked boxes in his new house beneath the mountains and breaking the silence with a soft burst of piano.
He says he is wondering how all that big sky will affect his music, scared of being lonely, of the possibility of having turned his back on his chance of "unconditional love and relationships and trust and bond". Fambly, he explains, is a reference to a Steinbeck mis-spelling from The Grapes of Wrath, a novel largely set around Modesto.
Working on the album, Lytle developed a "fascination with the concept of the disappearing family cat. They'll do that [when they're going to die], almost out of respect and not wanting to put people out. The idea, he says, was to end the cacophony abruptly, "and start the big, rocking first song", but he dismissed that as too obvious. To say I'm a fan of Grandaddy is an understatement. I first heard them years ago, when they toured the UK and I was working at the Roadhouse in Manchester.
They were these guys with long beards skateboarding round the venue, and when they played they were incredible. Grandaddy have always been bracketed with bands like Calexico and Giant Sand, but I think they were as important as the Flaming Lips.
They were like them, that youthful, energetic musical experimentation, but with an old soul, lyrically. There is a hardcore of songwriters and poets twinning technology and nature, rather than seeing technology as separate from evolution and Grandaddy are one of them.
I like the slow-burning songs, and I like the way he mixed his own fears with songs about building androids. He [Jason Lytle] did the exact same thing I did once: he got all liquored up and went up to some guy in a band he liked and said this is me, here's my tape. I just had a good feeling about Jason right from the start, all drunk and filthy. I went home to Tucson and his tape got stuck in the tape deck of my truck for four months, but I never much cared because it always fitted the mood somehow.
Because what Grandaddy have, it doesn't come very often - but it's a certain flavour. And when you hear that flavour in your head you find yourself thirsty for it.
It has a quench to it. These guys felt like family from the get-go. They'd come down to Arizona a lot. Jason even planted some trees in my yard. But bands, like marriages, have shelf lives. And it's important to explain why it's okay to split up. It'll make sense later. And when it doesn't make sense anymore, maybe they'll come back together again. The critics loved them. Their peers loved them. Things are clicking on a chemical level a lot better.
You were thinking this that soon after relocating? Lytle: It was a really stressful move. I have tons of gear, and moving is stressful no matter what.
I crossed a few states, and I was trying to keep somebody else in mind other than myself. The neighborhood was just a bit dicey. It was just the culmination of some negative shit.
My way of kind of blowing off steam was documenting a little frustrating period. I was with this person for over a decade, and we got married for a little bit.
There were all kinds of problems, and moving was sort of an attempt to maybe fix things. But all it really did was just pull the veil off, pull the blanket, open up the curtains and all the light sort of shown in on what was going on. Portland was the beginning of the end, and then it was just a matter of survival at that point. Paste : To transition back to the recording of Last Place —what do you feel has changed the most about you and the band since Grandaddy last cut an album in ?
I tread so lightly, and I'm always part of the reverse commute. I do my best to not contribute to what people are complaining about. I even had to deal with that when I moved to Bozeman a while back. Everyone there is complaining about the Californians moving there, but I'm not the annoying rich person who is buying all the property and treading heavily.
If anything, people like me should be welcome. But whatever, I want too worried about that. I was just doing what I needed to do, and here I am. Did you live here long enough to have any of those moments where you thought, "Shit, this traffic or this bougie store wasn't here when I moved here? I've had little stints in big cities here and there. Like, I had a friend in L.
At the point where I was leaving Modesto way back before I moved to Bozeman and was looking at new places to live, I was considering everything: Portland, Boise, Reno. Everything was a possibility, but I always knew I needed a lot of space and outdoor time and a good exit strategy. Ending up in Portland was kind of startling for me because I finally gave in and moved to a big city. I was out there at 42nd and Killingsworth, which is kinda out there by Portland standards, but it was still a bit much with the nervous energy and feeling trapped.
I had a few spots in Washington I liked if I wanted to get my nature fix and clear my head, but there was so much other stuff going on. I was trying to make someone else happy in addition to me, so I thought it was best to make the best of it and get through it. I made some good friends in studios and other work-related places, but there was a part of me that was shrinking definitely after coming from Montana and being so in love with however many people per square inch there is there and the access to the outdoors.
I'm almost more of an outdoor recreationalist than an active musician at this point. It's such a huge part of my life—biking, skiing, running and stuff. My master plan is to end up somewhere where I'll have direct access to that stuff.
All of it was a bit much, even when I got there. Long answer to probably a simple question, I guess. What's funny is the area you were in, Cully, is kinda remote by Portland standards. It's where people go when they want to set up a compound on a big lot with no sidewalk and plenty of room for their cult and their chickens and their vegan roommates to run free.
There are so many crazy little dirt roads and weird little side streets out there. I kinda loved it. I would ride my bike and run a lot out here and snoop around in all the little neighborhoods, weaving in and out of the area.
It gets a little colorful-slash-creepy out there. It's a little bit of a Wild West thing going on out there. Why did Grandaddy split up back in ? It was a lot of things.
I felt like we'd plateaued as a band. Up until then, I did a pretty good job of running on instinct and figuring out when was a good time to bump things up to another level.
There seemed to be a natural flow to it, like saying "OK" to things and keeping quality control in check. If anything, we kinda lucked out that things plateaued at the same time the money was going away.
The industry was changing big time and I was never kicking or scratching or trying too hard. Being a touring musician isn't interesting enough to me to stay in this, and there were all these reasons why it wasn't making sense anymore. I was falling out of love with music and there was all this baggage tagged on to being in a band and making music.
It was becoming not fun to me anymore. The excitement was going away. If anything that would've been the biggest crime—me watching the wonder and excitement and the adventure go away.
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