Kent Worcester Interview
Q: Can you talk about your musical history?
A: Absolutely. I started writing songs in high school and ended up joining a band in my senior year that some of my friends had already put together. The name of the band was The Dog’s Breakfast. It was a formative experience. While we sometimes played live concerts, our major emphasis was on songwriting and recording. The four of us continued to play together, on and off, during college, and we even recorded an album. It’s called Beautiful Banality and it’s on Bandcamp - https://thedogsbreakfast.bandcamp.com/releases.
Only one member of The Dog’s Breakfast ended up in the music business – the lead guitarist, Matt Backer. The drummer, Bill, plays in a jazz band but his main preoccupation is filmmaking, while the bass guitarist, Paul, became a radical pamphleteer. Matt Backer has released four solo albums and he’s also the guitarist for ABC, which had a big hit with an album called The Look of Love in the 1980s. His website is www.mattbacker.com/.
Over the years Matt has recorded a dozen or so of my songs. Some were released without vocals in the form of stock music, while others ended up on his albums. Our co-written song “Impulse Man” became the title track for his second album. Most of his music is on Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify, but one of my favorite Backer albums Is That All? was never released in the United States.
Q: I’m very interested in the fact that you write about comics. Do you feel that there is any creative overlap between the music and your interest in comics?
A: I started writing about comic books and graphic novels for The Comics Journal in the mid-1990s. Over the years I’ve edited and coedited several books on comics, including A Comics Studies Reader (2008) and The Superhero Reader (2013). (My Amazon page is here: https://www.amazon.com/Kent-Worcester/e/B001HD07QQ.) I recently finished a “political biography” of the Punisher, the Marvel character. I worked on that book for two years and played very little music while I was busy with it. Now that the manuscript is with my publisher, I’ve been picking up my guitar more often, but I haven’t written any new songs as yet.
Q: Can you talk about your release That's Why I Surf? What are some of the themes and topics?
A: The four songs on my Bandcamp EP were written and recorded between 2002 and 2015. They were recorded at my friend Bill’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We used Digital Performer and GarageBand. I played all of the instruments except for the synthesizer on the third song “Apart.”
All four songs are about the power of language, including the language of pop music, to warp our sense of reality. The first song “That’s Why I Surf” was written by someone who has never even seen a surfboard let alone been on one. I was fascinated by the idea of writing a song that uses a tiny quantity of information – minimal lyrics, instrumentation, and so on – and that nevertheless manages to create an entire world of meaning. My hope is that the listener will go, “Oh yeah! A surfing tune!” even though I have no legitimate basis for writing one.
The second song “You Should Move to Pittsburgh” is about the passive-aggressive uses of language. As with the first track, it’s not something you should take at face value. On the surface it’s about two strangers talking at a bus stop. It opens with the line, “I don’t even know you / but we’re talking / and it seems I have an idea.” But later on, the lyric says, “You should have moved long ago,” which suggests that the speaker knows more than he’s letting on. The inspiration of the song came from a conversation I had with a friend who was thinking of moving out of New York City. While I pretended to lend her a sympathetic ear, my inner voice was saying, “Ah yeah, just go ahead and move to friggin’ Pittsburgh. New York will still be here ya loser.”
“Apart” is a break-up song. It’s also about how language can get in the way of our struggle for happiness. At one point I sing about how we should “make our lies a stage,” which is a pretty good way of describing an unhappy relationship. The chorus says, “we should be together / and not so far apart,” but it’s clear by the end of the song that the two people should probably be apart and not together. It’s yet another song that features an unreliable narrator.
The final song looks at language from a different angle. The words are taken from Voltaire’s essay on fanaticism, which was first published in the 1760s. The song itself was recorded a few weeks after the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. “Law is impotent against acts of rage,” wrote Voltaire, and the limitations of language were very much on my mind in the period that followed the fall of the twin towers.
Q: You have written around forty songs over the past couple of decades. Are you planning on releasing any of these songs as well?
A: I could see releasing another EP on Bandcamp, and hopefully one or two of my newer songs will end up on a Matt Backer record at some point. Some of those songs should never see the light of day, however.
Q: What is your song writing process like?
A: I tend to write two different kinds of songs. The first are birthday songs for my daughter, and the second are songs that I’m hoping that Matt or others might want to record. In the case of the birthday tunes I like to know exactly what I want to accomplish before I start recording – all of the lyrics are written down and I’ve figured out the arrangements and so on beforehand. In the case of the other songs, my approach is more playful and spontaneous. I’ll usually take a song that’s about 80-90% finished and let the recording process take care of the rest. It’s amazing what you can come up with when you’re working under a strict deadline. And I’m always grateful for the feedback I’ve received from Bill, my recording partner, from Matt Backer, and from other friends and family.
Q: Do you currently play live or with any other members?
A: For whatever reason I’ve never enjoyed playing music in front of people. Even when I was in The Dog’s Breakfast, I would dread our live concerts. But I dig the process of recording music – it’s like entering a dream state.
Q: What else do we need to know about your music?
A: It’s all about the lyrics. Working within well-established folk and pop musical traditions is a way of adding additional layers of meaning to the words themselves. The music helps sell the bullshit, as it were. But it’s our collective love affair with bullshit, our tendency to swaddle ourselves in the stuff, that’s my real subject matter.
Q: Can you talk about your musical history?
A: Absolutely. I started writing songs in high school and ended up joining a band in my senior year that some of my friends had already put together. The name of the band was The Dog’s Breakfast. It was a formative experience. While we sometimes played live concerts, our major emphasis was on songwriting and recording. The four of us continued to play together, on and off, during college, and we even recorded an album. It’s called Beautiful Banality and it’s on Bandcamp - https://thedogsbreakfast.bandcamp.com/releases.
Only one member of The Dog’s Breakfast ended up in the music business – the lead guitarist, Matt Backer. The drummer, Bill, plays in a jazz band but his main preoccupation is filmmaking, while the bass guitarist, Paul, became a radical pamphleteer. Matt Backer has released four solo albums and he’s also the guitarist for ABC, which had a big hit with an album called The Look of Love in the 1980s. His website is www.mattbacker.com/.
Over the years Matt has recorded a dozen or so of my songs. Some were released without vocals in the form of stock music, while others ended up on his albums. Our co-written song “Impulse Man” became the title track for his second album. Most of his music is on Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify, but one of my favorite Backer albums Is That All? was never released in the United States.
Q: I’m very interested in the fact that you write about comics. Do you feel that there is any creative overlap between the music and your interest in comics?
A: I started writing about comic books and graphic novels for The Comics Journal in the mid-1990s. Over the years I’ve edited and coedited several books on comics, including A Comics Studies Reader (2008) and The Superhero Reader (2013). (My Amazon page is here: https://www.amazon.com/Kent-Worcester/e/B001HD07QQ.) I recently finished a “political biography” of the Punisher, the Marvel character. I worked on that book for two years and played very little music while I was busy with it. Now that the manuscript is with my publisher, I’ve been picking up my guitar more often, but I haven’t written any new songs as yet.
Q: Can you talk about your release That's Why I Surf? What are some of the themes and topics?
A: The four songs on my Bandcamp EP were written and recorded between 2002 and 2015. They were recorded at my friend Bill’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We used Digital Performer and GarageBand. I played all of the instruments except for the synthesizer on the third song “Apart.”
All four songs are about the power of language, including the language of pop music, to warp our sense of reality. The first song “That’s Why I Surf” was written by someone who has never even seen a surfboard let alone been on one. I was fascinated by the idea of writing a song that uses a tiny quantity of information – minimal lyrics, instrumentation, and so on – and that nevertheless manages to create an entire world of meaning. My hope is that the listener will go, “Oh yeah! A surfing tune!” even though I have no legitimate basis for writing one.
The second song “You Should Move to Pittsburgh” is about the passive-aggressive uses of language. As with the first track, it’s not something you should take at face value. On the surface it’s about two strangers talking at a bus stop. It opens with the line, “I don’t even know you / but we’re talking / and it seems I have an idea.” But later on, the lyric says, “You should have moved long ago,” which suggests that the speaker knows more than he’s letting on. The inspiration of the song came from a conversation I had with a friend who was thinking of moving out of New York City. While I pretended to lend her a sympathetic ear, my inner voice was saying, “Ah yeah, just go ahead and move to friggin’ Pittsburgh. New York will still be here ya loser.”
“Apart” is a break-up song. It’s also about how language can get in the way of our struggle for happiness. At one point I sing about how we should “make our lies a stage,” which is a pretty good way of describing an unhappy relationship. The chorus says, “we should be together / and not so far apart,” but it’s clear by the end of the song that the two people should probably be apart and not together. It’s yet another song that features an unreliable narrator.
The final song looks at language from a different angle. The words are taken from Voltaire’s essay on fanaticism, which was first published in the 1760s. The song itself was recorded a few weeks after the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. “Law is impotent against acts of rage,” wrote Voltaire, and the limitations of language were very much on my mind in the period that followed the fall of the twin towers.
Q: You have written around forty songs over the past couple of decades. Are you planning on releasing any of these songs as well?
A: I could see releasing another EP on Bandcamp, and hopefully one or two of my newer songs will end up on a Matt Backer record at some point. Some of those songs should never see the light of day, however.
Q: What is your song writing process like?
A: I tend to write two different kinds of songs. The first are birthday songs for my daughter, and the second are songs that I’m hoping that Matt or others might want to record. In the case of the birthday tunes I like to know exactly what I want to accomplish before I start recording – all of the lyrics are written down and I’ve figured out the arrangements and so on beforehand. In the case of the other songs, my approach is more playful and spontaneous. I’ll usually take a song that’s about 80-90% finished and let the recording process take care of the rest. It’s amazing what you can come up with when you’re working under a strict deadline. And I’m always grateful for the feedback I’ve received from Bill, my recording partner, from Matt Backer, and from other friends and family.
Q: Do you currently play live or with any other members?
A: For whatever reason I’ve never enjoyed playing music in front of people. Even when I was in The Dog’s Breakfast, I would dread our live concerts. But I dig the process of recording music – it’s like entering a dream state.
Q: What else do we need to know about your music?
A: It’s all about the lyrics. Working within well-established folk and pop musical traditions is a way of adding additional layers of meaning to the words themselves. The music helps sell the bullshit, as it were. But it’s our collective love affair with bullshit, our tendency to swaddle ourselves in the stuff, that’s my real subject matter.