You know, I’m not that sure if I can be really excited about it because actually the songs are truly terrible.
Photo by Bill Sitzmann
Cursive have been busy making music for over a decade. Hailing from somewhere in Omaha they’ve kept themselves busy without ever really making it big outside of the States. You’ll find many an American college drop out (usually in a baseball cap and wire rimmed glasses) proclaiming they’re one of the best bands around, but that’s never enough to convince anybody. We kinda like them here at Incendiary though, so when they called in at the Paradiso we sent our very own Marlies Oostland down there to have a chat with their lead singer, Tim Kasher.
Incendiary(IN): How is the tour going so far?
Tim Kasher(TK): It’s been good. We did five days or so with The Ataris in the UK, it’s our first time meeting them and we played with Planes Mistaken for Stars as well, some friends of ours, so it’s a good time.
IN: You’ve got the ‘Plea for Peace’ tour coming up in a couple of months. What is the idea behind that?
TK: We were invited to do Plea for Peace last year. It was for a suicide hotline to raise money for that and frankly, the awareness was not really there. I think it was still just a rock and roll show. But this year we got big friends with Mike Park, who runs the Asian Man Records, and he also runs the Plea for Peace, he started it. And we just got bigger friends with him, so we helped him co-ordinate the tour this year and since it actually worked, we were going around encouraging everybody to register, and I think it’s going to make a huge effect. We are not a political band, but we are interested in politics, at least in a year like this, when politics are a really big deal in the United States.
IN: Do you think music can change politics?
TK: No, not necessarily. But I think that everyone can help. I think that it’s just a matter of trying to be responsible with the soap box that we have, [as musicians] to be in front of a lot of people to spread that awareness. Because it is for a lot of younger people they can, in this way be approached [a lot easier] nowadays.
IN: In regards to your own songwriting, do you always strive for perfection?
TK: I guess there’s actually a limit to that. I strive to make sure that you keep working on it until it is really done, until everyone is really happy with it, but that’s not necessarily perfection. You can really ruin anything you’re working on if you’re being really particular about it. It’s a bad idea. I’m actually pretty lazy in the recording studios in a lot of respects.
IN: Are you able to do freely what you want with your music for yourself, or do you feel there is a kind of struggle between commercial success and your musical integrity?
TK: No, not in the least bit. We work on an independent label, and so it’s really a business that we kind of shared and started from the ground up, Saddle Creek. And they knew it would have really upset me if we didn’t have the freedom to write whatever we want. Also, I don’t think we would have gained the success that we have if we didn’t write exactly what we think we should write.
IN: What if, say, Britney Spears or someone like that would want to use one of your songs and you would have total freedom in what you did?
TK: That’s an interesting question. It would be tempting, because Britney Spears, if she really wanted to use one of our songs, we would get paid incredibly well for it. But I think it would have to be like.. I don’t disrespect Britney Spears maybe as much as you might think. There are certain people I really really wouldn’t want to use a song.
IN: Like?
TK: Oh, I don’t know. You know, there’s just people… (laughing). But I suppose.. just to follow on this really weird question, that if Britney Spears was interested in using a song that I’d written, I would tell her to go ahead and record it, and if I thought they did a good job with it, I’d be okay with it.
IN: And if Britney Spears wanted to sing along with you, with the whole band?
TK: I would probably just say that it’s not appropriate (laughing). I don’t want to be rude about it, it just doesn’t seem like a very good idea.
IN: Gretta, [cello player] was a late addition to the band. Is the line up still in flux or is this Cursive in its final form as we will see tonight?
TK: We are not going to bring any more real members. Like Gretta is a constant member, a touring member, a recording and a writing member of the band. But we are toying with the idea of writing horns for the new album, and bringing horn players in. Just hiring horn players to do the tour with us because we want to expand the sound even more, but we don’t want to be a seven-piece band. But we are willing to bring some people along with us, to help fill out the sound even more.
IN: Do you have any future predictions for Cursive?
TK: We are writing right now. It’s going pretty well. We are really excited to be doing that again, we took so much time off [from] writing because we were working on the album. Then once it did come out we’ve been promoting it for so long that we have just now started writing again. We’re going to release an album in maybe spring next year, hopefully. [We’ll] try to record it over the holidays, some weeks in December, something like that. Also, I guess Saddle Creek Records is working on bringing out a B-sides compilation of all the 7" that we did. I think they might actually release that in the fall or something, I’m not really sure what’s going on with that right now.
IN: It doesn’t sound like you’re totally happy with it. Was it your original idea or the record company’s?
TK: It’s an idea, I think, that’s been floating around for a while. Just because a lot of our 7" are very difficult to get a hold of, they just stopped pressing them. And it’s not something that we’re interested in, like it’s not something you do to make a buck. It’s more like something that you release for people who are really interested in the band, who are really interested in discovering more about what we did. And for collectors who want everything. But it’s not something that we expect to sell much. You know, I’m not that sure if I can be really excited about it because actually the songs are truly terrible. (laughing). Well, I mean not terrible, but just that the performances aren’t maybe as I ‘d love… I wish I could go back in time and restore them.
IN: Are there actually ideas for rewriting any songs?
TK: We’ve been toying with that idea too. There are years when we have done different versions of older songs, we thought maybe we might record some of those and throw them on as well.
IN: What’s your best and what’s your worst moment as a musician so far?
TK: This is probably my best and worst right now, these questions, they’re really weird (laughing). Probably actually my best and worst moments as a musician were all the earliest moments. It was the most exciting when we were really young, like fifteen years old, and people writing articles about us in the paper and we were going on the radio doing interviews, and we couldn’t believe it. We were writing our own songs, it really helped to motivate us to even to where we are now, which is almost fifteen years later. But at the same time, that was the worst time, because the music was just atrocious. It was just terrible. I mean, it was really bad music. But that’s okay. The compositions were still nice, it is just that… It was just awful! I forbid anybody to hear it!
IN: Is there any question left you always wanted to answer to, but you’ve never been asked?
TK: That I’ve always wanted to answer and nobody has ever asked? Sure. No one has ever asked to marry me, ever. I think it will be fun that I can have some serious, nice dinner and somebody ask to marry me, and I can go over the plusses and minuses of why I think it’s a good and decent idea, or why maybe I’m not ready (smiling).
In case you were wondering Marliese wasn’t ready either, so the question still hasn’t been asked.
Interview by: Marlies Oostland