James
Kochalka Superstar
The SiS Interview by Jose Fritz
JK: “I don’t think my songs are
novelty songs. One: I rock way too hard. There has never been a
novelty song that rocked as hard as the songs on Spread Your Evil
Wings and Fly. And Two: Novelty records tend not to have
a lot of soul. They might be silly but they’re emotionally
remove. I always invest a lot of real emotions in my music.”
While on the topic, I had asked Mr. Kochalka
about the novelty music label. I had no idea what a hot button
this was with him. I think I may actually have offended the
man. He responded with an inarguable statement of truth,
like reading Hemmingway when he gets into a stretch of those short
staccato sentences like "He went to the river. The river was
there." It was an answer that was so clear, so concise
and true that it no longer mattered what question I had asked.
James is good for that.
The interview had run long. I started
with 20 questions and Kochalka had steered the conversation in
that affable way that he does. I almost ran out of tape.
The interview went to the 90 minute mark, it’s transcript
over 15 pages. I had been asking serious questions, and uncharacteristically
he had actually answered most of them seriously and at some length. His
new album Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly is a truly great
album. Kochalka knows this. It’s a very personal
and important album to him, and at the end of the interview he
unexpectedly voiced concern about how I represent it in print.
JK: “My only concern now is
that we talked so seriously that the actual humor of the stuff
is gonna get lost. It’s gonna sound like a dreary serious
album which it really is not. A lot of what it’s about
is the pure joy that making music brings to us.”
James is famous for his comics. He’s
won the prestigious Ignatz Award four times, the Harvey award once
and has been nominated for numerous Eisner Awards. His best selling
comic book Monkey Vs. Robot sold over 10,000 copies. His website
Americanelf.com averages almost 3,000 hits per day. He has
created some things there that are truly great, perhaps even timeless. But
comics are only half the Kochalka story. There is also music. James
loves making music as much as he loves making comics. His
love is so altruistic and genuine he wants to share it with you
all. He wants to rock you and everyone you know and love. Spread
Your Evil Wings and Fly is his first album that packs the
kind of mass appeal that would make that possible.
JK: “…My single most
flawless work is Spread Your Evil Wings and Fly. The single
best thing that I’ve created is probably that album... I
think it’s clear from the music that it’s real emotion.
It’s not faked emotion. Anybody who listens to that
album can tell it was made by people that are really passionate
about music and were seriously trying to make a great album.”
His best friend and guitarist Jason Cooley
puts it a little more succinctly. I attended their recent
show at the Tritone Bar in Philly. Jason was drinking a microbrew
of questionable lineage and he held up a fresh copy of the new
album, still in the plastic wrapper. He said something like: “Now
I can die happy. We’ve recorded the perfect record. Now I
can finally kill myself.”
I know it’s a great record. He knows it’s
a great record and so do their thousands of fans. But there still is
resistance to our friendly superstar. But what is there to hate about
Kochalka?
JK: “Some people do hate me. They
hate me for my work, [and] they hate the music so much. Commercial
[radio] is just devastatingly mean with their comments on the
record. College radio is pretty supportive but commercial
radio thinks it’s a pile of poop. [Only] a few commercial
stations have started playing it.”
JF: “Does it hurt your feelings?”
JK: “No, because I know they’re
gonna hate it. My work always inspires strong reactions. Some
people love it, some people hate it. It’s better
that way because at least they talk about it. People write
to me, and one loves it and the other hates my guts. Sometimes
I will actually get letters from people: I have hated your work
for years, and then I read such-and-such and now I can’t
get enough… Even if people hate you, if they’re
thinking about you, they are a potential fan in the long haul.”
He is a perpetual optimist, but I think
it’s kind of sick how little credit James gets in music. When
he publishes a comic, his name is on the cover and in that arena
he gets that credit. As for being a persistently D.I.Y. intellectual
punk-icon for two decades, he gets nada. His kind of contribution
to society is comparable to Frank Zappa or Jello Biafra, but still
he gets nothing. And it happens because he’s silly. In
the late ‘80s, Rats of Unusual Size got shafted similarly. He’s
released over 20 albums, all but two on his own or on small indie
labels. Probably ten of those don’t even have a guitar
on them. He puts his music on line for free download. He
embraces and innovates with lo-fi devices, fully recoding tracks
on his Gameboy and a toy called Electroplankton from Nintendo DS. Despite
all this he still he gets treated like a novelty artist by some
people. I asked him “Why?”
JK: “One reason is that my
music is silly. People think that somehow there’s no room
for silliness in music... People are happiest
when the emotion you’re expressing is anger. That’s
the only one anyone understands. I wear all my various
emotions on my sleeve. I don’t think that I could make
the art or music I make if I wasn’t that kind of guy. I
think the stuff that I do is all emotional. I am an emotional
guy and my work is emotional. I think that’s another thing
that some people hate about it.”
Ironically, Spread Your Evil Wings is
his least silly album to date. Despite all the resistance,
persecution, and disrespect he’s gotten in the past he never
got angry. His music remained fun, eccentric and even sometimes
cute. As he said himself “I approach everything in my
life with a sense of humor, even the most dreadful parts.” It
takes a lot to get James angry enough to write an angry song. But
then some suicidal jihadist assholes flew some airplanes into some
buildings. James saw this on TV. He and all three billion
Americans got pretty upset about it.
Most people hide some of their emotions, but Kochalka
does not. His feelings are very outward, almost advertised in his motions
and expressions while occasionally lashing out. Then he writes a comic
about it, and or writes a song about it. He might also throw himself
on the floor flailing and screaming but whatever; he’s an artist. They
get to do that. So when Warner Bro’s asked that he not mention Spread
Your Evil Wings and Fly was a response to 9/11 he totally ignored them. James
seems brave as balls in that way. But he’s explained his brand
of bravery before.
JK: “I ignore my lack of courage. When
I’m scared to step into the wild unknown, I step into the
wild unknown anyway.”
At that Tritone show he took the mic and laid it out. The
one sheet that comes with the promo CD says: with songs inspired
by “recent events.” On stage James blurts it
out. This album is about 9/11. He was clear, concise
and inarguable, and then he rocked.
JK: We started recording it just
a couple weeks after the September 11 attacks. Everybody
felt utterly devastated. I watched it on television and it looked
like the end of the world. It was an emotionally crushing
event. So powerful, you couldn’t really do anything. We
had a candlelight vigil up here and nobody has any idea what
to do. Some people tried to sing peace songs but nobody knew
the words. Some people didn’t want peace and nothing really
came out of the candlelight vigil at all. Not even a sense of
community which is what everyone is supposed to get. We’re
supposed to get along and come together and feel united. We
all came together and felt utterly un-united. But
we didn’t’ feel that way when we rocked. When we
play with the band we felt powerful... It really just strengthened
our resolve to rock harder. That’s how the album
ended up so hard.”
I saw James play a show in New York in
2002. It wasn’t as rock as the new material. The
road to rock has been a long one for our Burlington-based Superstar. His
previous band Jazzin’ Hell was about as far removed from
rock music as you can be while still plugging into an amplifier. With Spread
Your Evil Wings and Fly the Nintendo samples and the Casio
keyboard loops are gone. These are rock songs. Cuts like “Wash
your Ass” are Black Sabbath-esque and I mean that literally. This
seems like a progression over time. I wondered where it was coming
from.
JK: “It’s sort of strange. When
I was in Jazzin’ Hell the line up was Casio, and saxophone
and we were way ahead of our time. At that time I vowed
I would never be in a band with a guitar. Guitar was played
out.”
JF: “Seriously?”
JK: “Absolutely. There was
no need for another guitar band ever again. However you say a
lot of stupid stuff when you’re 18…and it’s
fun to rock.”
JF: “Is that the driving
force? “It’s fun to rock?”
JK: “Yeah, and I have friends
that are amazing rock musicians.”
The Tritone show was absolutely killer. I
won’t rehash it, I’ll just quote myself: “A man
sang cabaret, then there were dancers and a woman played “I
Am Your Sunshine” on a saw with a bow. There were cross-dressers,
jugglers and cross-dressing jugglers, a public spanking, a drag
queen with a horsewhip and a very petite woman wearing a cardboard
tree. A man in drag (possibly a very ugly woman) stripped on stage. A
bearded man got on stage and played a toy guitar. He didn’t
really play it. It played itself and he rocked out like it
was an air guitar contest There were also half a dozen roller
derby-ish looking cheerleaders crowded around the stage but I don’t
know if they actually came with them from Burlington or if they
were Philly natives.”
It turned out that none of that entourage came with
the Kochalka crew. They came to play with him, to perform for him and
beside him. There was less burlesque at the show I saw in New York four years
ago, but just as much commotion. I forget the name of the venue but it
was across the street from a gay ice cream bar called the Pink Pony. Gay
men burst into the bar nibbling ice cream cones basking in his vaguely divine
glory. How did this all happen to a nerdy comic book artist from Vermont?
JK:” To really explain the
trajectory of my career we have to go back to 1986, when I first
started my college band Jazzin’ Hell. I could not
believe how great the music was, and I thought we probably would
be world-famous, like Paris Hilton-level famous, in like two
or three weeks. And this thought terrified me so much that
I had like a little mini-breakdown. So the entire rest
of my career became geared to becoming famous as slowly as possible
so I don’t have the shock of that sudden fame that scared
me so much when I was 18.”
I asked him a question about limited
fame. I thought it was a good question but he had been thinking
about it already; eradicated mine and asked himself a better one.
JF: I’m sure you are familiar
with what Andy Warhol said about 15 minute of fame, his idea
of moderate or limited fame. Have you ever considered that
what he said kind of culminated in americanelf.com?
JK: I actually prefer a quote by
Momus. He had this interview with himself on an album. [Also
in his essay: PopStars? Nein Danke!]Warhol
said that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Momus
said in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people
and that has definitely has come true. I am famous to the
people that know me but not everyone else. Everyone has a blog
and 15 of their friends read it, it’s the same idea.
It’s the same idea, but a lot more
than 15 people read americanelf.com. For James that level of interest
has been paired with a high level of access. His ongoing
sketchbook diaries have given his fans a stilted but open-ended
access into his personal life. It’s a daily comic by
James about his life. In this format James travels through
the ouroboros mouth-to-ass (or ass-to-mouth) like a commensal animal
out of himself into his fictional comic world and back again ad
infinitum. The passage is both philosophical and whimsical.
By his own admission it connected him to his fans on a new level.
It’s out of context, but as Jason X-12 told
me later that night “The best way to make a fan is to invite them
to play with you.” When he found out his wife Amy was pregnant
again, James wrote about it. The comic gets uploaded and thousands of
people know. It brings him closer to his fans, but there is a dark side
to that. It begat a stream of letters from psychology students trying
to diagnose him with various illnesses, like manic depression, hypochondria,
fecalphilia and alcoholism to name a few, but there have also been some scares.
JK: “One guy a pretty long time ago
staked out my P.O. Box. He wasn’t from Vermont, he drove
up from somewhere and waited at my PO Box.. He wanted to show
me his sketchbook.”
JF: “So it’s not all good-natured?”
JK: “No. Here’s another
story. There was a guy that was emailing me dirty songs
about me and sending me porn with my face on all the different
characters and peoples bodies. Then he started sending me pictures
of naked children with my face on them. I called the police. That
was the last I ever heard of him.
But in every other way the closeness
has paid off. The Tritone show did not have flyers or posters.
It was not announced in the local concerts columns, or even the
clubs own website. On the day of the show, the concert calendar
in the front window just read “TBA.” But
still people came just to see James Kochalka Superstar. His
fans went to the show. The show was there. He had posted
it on his message board. That’s all he needed to do. American
Elf is not only the epicenter of all things Kochalka, but also
the very thing that revived his own connection to his fans. It’s
easy to humanize a room of ten fans in one bar. It is not
easy to humanize 10,000 people purchasing your comic book.
JF: “In 2002 you said that
the more famous you get, the harder it is for you to think of
your fans of human beings. That was four years ago. How hard
is it now?”
JK: It’s gotten better...
That was before I started doing American Elf online. [My
readers] often write to me now on the message board and they
seem much more real as people now. The American Elf strip
online has really changed my life. Comics are a very solitary
sort of profession. You’re at a drawing table, and you
draw and it takes a long time create something that finally,
eventually years later is published. Then maybe someone will
write you a letter, or maybe somebody will review it. But
for the most part you have no idea what anyone is thinking. But
with the diary strip, I draw it, it’s out there, they read
it…and then people respond. The strip is basically
my life and they’re experiencing it in real time. It could
only happen on internet. For me just knowing that they’re
reading it, even if they don’t respond I feel much less
isolated.”
It’s an understatement. Saying
people respond to his work is like saying raw phosphorus responds
to water and air. His fans are loyal as Davidians. In
some circles his artwork is elevated to the level of cult object.
But he is still trying to grow the fame slowly, stay grounded. Spread
Your Evil Wings and Fly is in that way just another step. But
it’s also one that has such deep personal meaning and revolves
around such a culturally intense event that he seems more vested
in it than anything before. His personality and philosophy
are more clearly embossed than any previous work.
JK: “Whatever your philosophy
is on life, if it doesn’t make life better in some way;
then what? It’s better to have a world view that
makes life better, than a world view that makes life worse.
JF: “And here you are putting
out a record to make the world better”
JK: “Yes. Because it’s
the record that everybody needed...”
As we wrapped up, I thought of his book The
Cute Manifesto. After some 200 pages of his thoughts on comics,
art, expression, emotion and the nature of life and death, he
ended with a paragraph to caveat the whole work. He backed
off of his resolute statements, and equated truth to a slippery
cave fish. He’s not entirely comfortable intellectualizing
his work. I’m out of context again but he said “I
don’t always understand my choices. I intuitively
do, but I can’t explain it.” So, some
of his explanations herein also become slippery cave fish. At
the end of the interview he qualified his answers again giving
us all room to make our own analysis, learn our own lessons,
and take our own enjoyment of the record.
JK: “I don’t like to
claim to be smart, because the people that do often seem to be
quite stupid.”
JF: “Can I quote you on that?”
JK: “Yes you can.”
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