There’s nothing worse than writers’ block, Built To Spill frontman Doug Martsch confesses. In fact, some days you wake up feeling like you just want to throw in the towel – even if you’re the founder of one of the biggest indie-rock bands of the last two decades.
There’s nothing worse than writers’ block, Built To Spill frontman Doug Martsch confesses. In fact, some days you wake up feeling like you just want to throw in the towel – even if you’re the founder of one of the biggest indie-rock bands of the last two decades.
“I don’t think you’ll find a lot of musicians easily admit this,” contemplates Martsch. “But I don’t think I’m a natural musician. It doesn’t come easy for me; it never really did. Some people talk about how the words and music comes pouring out of them almost beyond their control – I’m not an instant musician… When I’m working in the studio or laying down vocal or guitar tracks, it’s a lot of work for me!” he laughs.
“I seem to be fine when I’m on stage – I’ve gotten comfortable with that – but in the studio I totally feel like I’m under the microscope. I do tend to overanalyse everything and I don’t know if that is because I am a perfectionist or because I’m just not comfortable in the studio. I think that normally it really shouldn’t be that much different but it’s a huge difference for me.”
Martsch claims that much self-doubt and second-guessing had taken place in his mind over the last six of the band’s records… As the singer explains, often an album would be somewhere mid-point when all of a sudden paranoia and fear would set in and most of the material would end up scrapped or completely reworked. The only exception being Built To Spill’s latest offering from 2009 There Is No Enemy…
“I had to get eye surgery during that time,” recalls Martsch. “I had almost lost complete vision in one eye; it was very damaged. In a lot of ways, it was a very traumatic experience for me and a lot of the lyrics speak about that. In this case, it did come flowing out of me because I had a lot of fear and vulnerability to express. And I think that’s the reason why people like this album so much – because there is so much vulnerability coming through it and maybe they just relate.
“Overall, I don’t think the albums are getting easier to make,” he adds. “I feel like one day I’ll have complete grasp of what I’m doing then the next day I hate it all and think ‘what the hell am I doing?’ Actually, it’s kind of like that with every aspect of my life – one day I’m confident, the next day I’m uncertain. I have a hard time feeling solid,” he muses.
And yet, ‘solid’ happens to be the first word that comes to mind for most Built To Spill fans when talking about Martsch and co. in a live setting. And while the band have no future plans as yet to get back in the studio for album number eight, Martsch claims the band have been making up for it through extensive touring in 2010.
“We’ve just got home after six weeks touring around the ‘States. The last couple of years, with the economy going weird and record sales not being very good at all – people are sick of trying to sell records but not getting any money in return. Built To Spill have always toured to make money, because we never really sold records anyway,” he laughs. “Maybe we’ve actually toured a bit too much!
“After Australia maybe we’ll go to Europe again and hopefully we’ll get to open for someone over there. To be honest, we don’t actually do that well over there,” he admits candidly. “A lot of it is because of our own making – we’ve neglected that entire continent for 10 years now. We did get invites to come over in the ‘90s when we were most popular, but we said no to a lot of them because it was just bad timing. I didn’t like traveling too far at that point because of my family and my kid was very young; it was extra hard going all the way to Europe.
“I wasn’t realty that ambitious either,” Martch points out. “We had a good team behind us over there though – an indie was putting out our first few record then Warners started doing it but did a shit job. In the end, for the last 10 years it looked like we didn’t even exist over there, so I guess it would be nice to remind people that we had some momentum.”
Martsch claims that even though Built To Spill have no recording plans at the moment, the frontman has been getting somewhat nostalgic with his old high school band Farm Days.
“I’ll be recording some material with them next year,” he confirms. “Last February we did a benefit show so we got together and learned the songs that we did in high school. Lyrically, they’re really embarrassing!” he chuckles. “We used to be kind of punk-ish and the songs were about girls and being rejected. We’ve written some new songs though because the high school lyrics kind of don’t apply anymore,” he grins.
“There’s a song called Skin Deep which has the worst line of them all – ‘Pretty girls only see the skin’… Yeah, that’s what I mean. So we’re writing some new songs at the moment obviously, maybe doing some lyrical adjustments to old tracks! It’s been fun though, it’s nice to do something different even if reliving high school sounds a little bizarre.”
The legendary BUILT TO SPILL return to Australia to play the PYRAMID ROCK FESTIVAL on Phillip Island – alongside N*E*R*D*, The Temper Trap, Future Of The Left, Chromeo, Mystery Jets and heaps of other excellent bands across December 29 – January 1. All tickets and info from thepyramidrockfestival.com.
They also play a sideshow (supported by The Smallgoods and Telecom) in Melbourne at The Corner Hotel on Saturday January 1. Tickets from The Corner box office, 9427 9198, cornerhotel.com or feelpresents.oztix.com.au. BUILT TO SPILL’s latest album There Is No Enemy is out now.
