KJHK-FM. May 2, 1994

DJ/Interviewer Unknown, Transcribed by Ellie Hedge

["Words" by Low finishes playing]

DJ: ...That was music from Low. That was a track called "Words", and we are lucky enough to have Low right downstairs here at KJHK. Say hello, guys!

AS & MP: Hello!

[the band and DJ spend a few seconds fixing levels]

DJ: As I mentioned, in the studio we have Low. And Low, just in case you haven't heard them, they're really cool. They're made up of Alan Sparhawk on guitar and vocals, Mimi [said like 'meh-meh', which audibly puzzles her] Parker, the percussionist, and John Nichols, the bass player. Say hi, everybody!

AS: Hello, everybody!

MP: Hi!

DJ: Do you guys wanna play something, and then we'll talk about yourselves, or what do you want to do?

AS: Let's start off with a little ditty, sure.

[the band plays "Fear"]

DJ: Where are y'all from? You're from Duluth, right?

AS: Yes, sir. We sure are.

DJ: Can you do something for me, one of you? Say the word 'Minnesota'.

AS: Minnesota.

DJ: Okay, you didn't carry your 'O' quite as much as most of the people I know from that state.

AS: [in exaggerated Minnesotan accent] Minnesota?

DJ: [in accent] Minnesota.

AS: [in accent] Yah, we're from Duluth. There up by the lake in Minnesota.

DJ: Y'know, I've always wondered why the kids from '90210' who are supposedly from Minnesota don't carry their 'O'.

AS: Well... because '90210' is not real.

DJ: Exactly. What can you tell me about your new album? You were produced by that guy Kramer. What was it like working with him?

AS: Quick, very efficient in a lot of ways. He's a very different character. He's worked with a lot of different people. People's experiences with him have varied and you get different stories here and there, but we had a real good time with him. I like what he did on the record, and he's kept in contact and been a good friend with us ever since.

DJ: You didn't see Annie Magnuson around at all, did you?

AS: Uh, no. I think, uh...

JN: We got there after that.

AS: She's a thing of the past. She lives in California, I think now.

DJ: Well, a band such as you, you're pretty low-key, right? Well, I mean, obviously.

MP: What do you mean by that?

DJ: Well, I mean... Listening to your whole album, it's pretty mellow. I think that's why everybody- that's why I love it, I'll have to say. But, have you ever had anyone just go totally nuts when you're playing live, even when you're so mellow?

JN: A couple times.

AS: Our sound man, Zach, goes pretty nuts. No, nobody gets real crazy and flips out or anything. Some people don't really like what we're doing, obviously, and they can't handle something so quiet and slow so...

JN: They scream.

AS: Yeah, they scream a lot and they jeer us with drug references and such. We get a little bit of that, but most of the time people are content with just sitting back and listening.

DJ: Speaking of drugs, there's a rumor that you don't drink, smoke, cuss, or even play on Sundays. What's the deal there?

AS: Well, that's true. We try not to cuss.

MP: Alan's not very good at it.

AS: I'm not very good at not cussing. I'm working on that part.

MP: John's not very good...

JN: I gave up on that.

DJ: Shame! Shame, Alan!

AS: Shame on me. We try to stay away from things, partially a religious thing, at least on Mim and I's part, and partially just the fact that we can't afford it.

DJ: That's just pretty much it? You just don't do it.

AS: Yeah, that's just... I mean, it's not part of the contract of being in the band or something like that. It just so happens that none of us get into that.

DJ: You guys just have such a good background.

AS: Oh yes, we were raised by completely wholesome Midwest families, so we're just darlings.

MP: We're as normal as they get.

AS: We're as normal as anyone is, I guess.

DJ: What's it like for you, Alan and Mimi, being married yet in the same band? What does that do creatively? Do you have any problems with that?

MP: We can kinda get tired of each other... after a while.

AS: Well, you c-- Yeah.

MP: I mean, you know, you spend 24 hours a day [together] on a personal and professional level.

AS: It's weird. It took some getting used to, but...

MP: It's something that we always wanted to do, so I guess we're happy with it. I mean, we're happy that we can do it, so we can't complain that we've got it a lot better than... I feel bad for the Luna folks. They're separated from their loved ones. Stan's got little kids at home...

AS: ...and Dean's married, and a bunch of other guys. We're lucky that we get to hang out with each other all the time and play music.

DJ: Speaking of Luna, you're playing with them and Matthew Sweet this evening at Liberty Hall, Lawrence, Kansas. What's it like touring with Luna and Matthew Sweet? Have you been with them very long?

AS: For Luna and us it's the first time with Matthew Sweet. He's just on tour and I think someone...

MP: ...happened to cross paths and then they set up the show.

AS: Yeah, decided to put it all on one bill. We've been with Luna for a couple weeks now, we got a another week to go. They're really great guys, really nice, and as far as the type of stuff we're doing it's a good band to be opening for.

DJ: Yeah, I see a lot of similarities myself.

AS: I mean, they're obviously more rockin' than us, but there are definitely worse bands to pair us up with.

DJ: Can you guys really hear each other when you breathe-- I mean hear each other breathe when you play?

AS: Sometimes, yeah. It comes out more when we're practicing in the basement, noodling around and playing stuff. There are times when we do get quiet enough that we [hear each other breathe]. [But] it was just a joke. It was funny, we were playing one time, then someone looked up and said "Geez, John! I can hear you breathing!" It was funny and I guess someone in the record company thought that was cute, so they wrote it down.

DJ: They write it down in your bio and then all of a sudden it becomes legendary stuff.

AS: Yeah, gotta have something exciting to say about us, I guess.

[the band plays "Sea"]

DJ: Let's talk about the album, it's called "I Could Live in Hope". Where is Hope?

AS: Hope is...

MP: Hope is wherever you want it to be.

AS: Hope brings charity, charity brings... something, I don't know. Faith, hope, charity. Isn't that the order?

DJ: Yeah, I think so.

AS: Yeah. Get on Highway 2, you get to Faith first, and then Hope.

JN: Yeah, that's right after Faith.

AS: And if you get to Charity, you know you've gone too far.

DJ: That's great! I'll have to remember that.

AS: Yeah. [beat] Is that a leading question?

DJ: Well, I was wondering about the... Some have thought that was about Hope, New Jersey.

AS: Well uh, yeah. That's...

JN: That's where it originated, but it's not what it's about, exactly.

MP: You guys are slaves to that bio, aren't ya?

AS: You are.

DJ: Oh, come on!

AS: Why don't you ask what kind of pants we like wearing?

DJ: What kind of pants do you like wearing?

AS: Baggy pants. Doesn't everybody? Let's see... "Hope"?

MP: Hope, New Jersey.

AS: We were sitting in Hope, New Jersey on our way back from our first recording session with Kramer, eating a deli sandwich with some ice cream and fresh milk. Someone who was with us looked around at the town we were in and said "I could live in Hope". Kinda like 'this is a neat place, it would be cool to live here'. It just seemed like a funny phrase, and later on we were figuring out to call the album and that just kinda stuck. It is about Hope, New Jersey, and yet it's not. The whole humor of the phrase is that it could be taken two ways. There's one very blatantly silly way of taking it, and then there's some "deep hidden meaning" way of taking it too. It's one of those... I don't know what the word is for a phrase that means two very different things.

DJ: I believe it's called "double entendre". Not sure there, but I think so.

AS: Will have to write a song called "Double Entendre".

DJ: Yeah, you could have it have two meanings.

[Alan starts improvising a song on his guitar]

AS: Double entendre...

[he messes up a chord and everyone laughs]

DJ: I think you have something there!

AS: Yeah, that's for sure.

DJ: You know, I've heard critics call you an "airy mud" band kinda like Slowdive or Cocteau Twins. What do you think about that?

MP: I don't see any mud.

AS: I don't see any mud, and I don't see any air.

MP: Well, maybe a little air.

JN: There's a lot of air.

MP: Also, water. I think maybe water. Carbonated water!

AS: Carbonated water... I don't know. I mean, just cause there's a girl in the band, I guess some people think that-

MP: Yeah, bring on the [?]. I guess we don't mind the comparsion to Slowdive. I mean, we like Slowdive, but in terms of volume and stuff, we don't compare at all.

AS: They have really layered, layered music, and we're very raw. With the whole record, we pretty much just set up our stuff, played, went back and did the vocals. But there's no overdubs, there's not even doubling on the vocals, whereas someone like Slowdive or Cocteau Twins have 15 different guitar tracks and sampled vocals backwards and this and that. We don't do that. We like to play our songs the way they come out.

DJ: That's the best way, anyway.

AS: Well, for us it is. Some people are very good at that and I think that Slowdive and Cocteau Twins are some of the best.

DJ: Do you have anything in particular that you want people to get out of your music when they sit back and listen to it?

MP: No, I think that'd be a bad mistake to come out and say something like that. I mean, when we [make music], we don't go in with a set idea of "we want this song to say this", y'know?

AS: Yeah, it's just songs. Everybody gets a different thing out of it, and that's fine with us. We're not gonna dictate what people should be thinking, then it'd be justified for them to tell us what to play.

DJ: Well, speaking of songs, "Sunshine" is on this album. It's a rather classic tune. You decided to cover that. What went into thinking about that? Do you just really like it?

AS: For some reason, it's been a song that's always been around, at least in Mim and I's life.

MP: Yeah, people used to sing it when we were kids.

AS: I used to work at a camp for mentally handicapped people during the summers, and it seemed to be for some reason their favorite song.

MP: It was called Camp Sunshine, wasn't it?

AS: Well, it was at other camps too. You'd just be walking down the hill on the way to art class or nap time or something, and everyone would just crack into "You Are My Sunshine", and it was great.

MP: It's a terribly depressing song when you listen to the lyrics.

AS: Yeah, it's not the most bright thing.

DJ: I just find myself busting into song all the time like that.

AS: Really?

MP: Are you in a band?

AS: Did you ever go to Camp Sunshine?

DJ: No I didn't. I never went to camp. It's a long, bad story.

MP: I never did either.

AS: Neither did I.

[the band plays "Drag"]

DJ: It's been wonderful having you in the studio! Is there anything else that you want to tell our listeners out there?

AS: I don't know. We were actually in town since Sunday morning. Got a cheap hotel that would let us in, so we've been in your town, whether you know it or not, for about a day and a half now.

DJ: And what do you think about Lawrence, Kansas?

AS: Well, it reminds us a lot of Bemidji. It's nice to be in the midwest again. We've been in the south, and the south is strange.

MP: Nice cool weather, I suppose too. Florida and Mississippi were too hot for us Minnesota folks.

AS: But we had a nice time. You have nice people, and that one... what's that bowling alley we've been at?

MP: I can't remember. Royal Crest or something.

AS: Royal Crest Bowling Alley? We've been playing pool a lot there, and it's a very nice place. Nice lady who works there.

DJ: You've been playing pool at a bowling alley?

MP: Uh-huh!

AS: Yeah, they have a little arcade and... oh, we were playing Terminator, weren't we? Terminator? This video game where you shoot... shoot the Terminator things, man, it was great. It was really... stressful. The 'Shoot' game! I'm surprised they don't have the 'Punch' game, though. Ever seen the 'Punch' game?

DJ: I've never seen the 'Punch' game.

AS: It's this big thing where you punch it, you get three punches, you can pit yourself against stuff like semis and giant crabs. It's a great game. You actually punch this pad and it measures how hard you punch and if you're a tough enough person you can kill the truck or the crab or whatever's coming. [note: he's referring to "Sonic Blast Man"]

DJ: It sounds pretty violent.

AS: It is, it's really kinda strange that we like those. [laughs]

MP: [laughs] I've never tried them.

AS: You don't like them? Mim's getting good at pool, though.

DJ: Oh wow. Who's the best pool player among the band Low?

JN: Zach.

AS: Zach is pretty good, he's our sound guy, he's pretty good. Mim was really good today, she beat all of us handily.

MP: Yeah, it was my lucky day.

AS: She was lucky today. Anyway, that's been an exciting day for us, I can tell you that right there!

DJ: Well, I'm sure it's gonna be even more than exciting tonight when you get to open up the show tonight for Luna and Matthew Sweet at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas!

AS: Yeah, it's gonna be great! Everyone, come down!

DJ: And you guys are going on stage around when?

AS: Doors are open at 7:30, so I imagine we're playing... probably as soon as 8. And we got a whole set of this wonderful stuff, so come on down!