Charlemagne

A conversation with Carl Johns

(November 2005)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

A true Midwestern winter can be a real bully.  Madison, WI, is consistently ranked near the top of the lists of most desirable or most livable cities in the country, due in part to its abundance of outdoor activity and gorgeous scenery.  While there is still plenty to do and admire during the intimidating winters, it’s a lot harder to mill around with a friend on a street corner or suck down an extra lakeside beer.

Fortunately, Charlemagne’s Carl Johns is fighting back against the winter, using it as the fuel for his songwriting—which, on the new Detour Allure, is more summery and pop-friendly than ever.  The country-tinged echoes of his previous band, NoahJohn, are silenced, but the psychedelic touches remain, albeit under strictly melodic conditions.  Any uninitiated fans of Luna or the Elephant 6 collective should take notice. 

Reached just prior to jetting off for a brief spin through the U.K., Johns talks about his new record, his stomping grounds, and his rivalry with the long, cold winter.

I’ve done bunches of these, but this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with someone from my birthplace and the home of my alma mater.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I love it there.  But I left Madison after graduating from UW in 2000.  How has the music scene changed in the years since?

Well, I’ve been here since ’97, and I’m obviously not involved in all the facets of it.  But we had O’Cayz Corral burn down in 2000, and then we had a few years with no real venues.  It was pretty underground, and it made for fewer bands and less enthusiasm because of that lack of venues.

But it’s pretty good now.  Cathy [Dethmers], who owned O’Cayz, opened up the High Noon Saloon.  There’s the Slipper Club, which used to be the Rainbow Room.  Then the old Chamber is now the King Club, so there are three really good places.

Also, we’ve just started a collective called Wisconsin Pop Explosion, which is a group of pop-centric bands.  In addition that stuff, which I’ve involved in, there seems to be lots of live music and lots of people going out to see it.  It’s pretty darned good right now.

What’s the Wisconsin Pop Explosion all about?

It’s an art and music collective.  I guess we have about five or six bands.  We have a website [ http://www.wipopexplosion.com ].  It’s a pretty low-key thing.  It’s a lot of screen printing.  We’re doing some releases, though we’re not a record label—it’s just kind of to document, and we’re doing hand-packaged, short-run releases.  We did a trilogy of singles before the Charlemagne album came out with three songs apiece.  We also throw events—this year we’ve had three events.  And that’s bands, but it’s also piñatas and cupcakes and all sorts of handmade crazy stuff.  We’re trying to make it more than just the average gig.

I’d read an interview in which you said you were more inspired by winter than by the other seasons.  Is that because winter in Madison kind of forces you inside and makes it easier to buckle down, or is there something specific about the season that gets the creative juices flowing?

Well, it’s kind of a combination of things.  Being forced indoors and not being out and about…that’s part of it.  Also, I suffer from seasonal depression, so I actually sit in front of one of those light boxes every morning—not when I’m traveling, obviously, but it’s just to get more light.  I think going to work when it’s dark and coming home when it’s dark can make us all a little more moody and inspired to write.  Generally, I have a sentiment about fighting back against that and creating.  I wrote maybe three songs this past spring and summer, and I have six or seven in the works now that I expect to be finished.  During the summer, it’s nonstop gigs and bike rides and cookouts and everything.

You’re off to the U.K. now, right?  Like in a matter of minutes?

Yeah, I’m flying out tonight.

What’s the Charlemagne live show like these days?

It can really vary.  In the U.K., it’s going to be myself and Katydid, who did most of the female backups and sang lead on “I Heard Something.”  She plays electric guitar and I play acoustic.  Right when we get back, we’re doing four shows with a full, five-piece band—that’s the band that played on the record.  Then starting in February, I’m starting a national tour, and most of that—if not all of it—is going to be a trio.  And I’m not quite sure what that’s going to sound like yet.  I have this pool of musicians, we have sort of a family to choose from, mostly folks from the Pop Explosion.  It looks like maybe one guy will go for the whole time, but it’s going to be different lineups and we’ll be changing lineups accordingly.

From the press I’ve read—both on Charlemagne and on NoahJohn—there’s a lot of attention paid to the variations between albums, the shift in styles and so forth.  Is that something that you’re conscious of as you dive into a new record?  Is it the sort of thing where you’re throwing out song ideas because they sound too much like something you’ve done in the past?

It’s not really that.  I just kind of get bored doing the same thing over and over again.  I don’t know if the songs are as different as the treatment of the songs, although I’ve written a few breakthrough songs where I’ve thought, “Wow, that’s totally different from anything I’ve done.”  If I look back, I’ve definitely changed some in the way that I sing and I’m more into pop structure now than before.  But for the most part, it’s deciding whether we want to record live—it’s “How are we going to make this thing?”

I did the last album—I played all the instruments and did it on my own.  NoahJohn records were, for the most part, recorded live in the studio.  For Detour Allure, I just sort of used the band as session players.

And was there always the plan to do the lo-fi/hi-fi thing of recording at home and mixing at Smart [Studios]?

Yeah.  It worked so well for the last one, and we kind of do it out of necessity, for cost.  It’s relatively inexpensive to record in my friend’s home studio very close to my house.  And we wanted to take as long as we wanted and to be in this relaxed home atmosphere and to be around friends.  Smart did such a good job last time with the mixing, and I really wanted to put it through and give it that post-production treatment.