IPOD
RADIO
The Black Heart Procession
By Daniel Robert Epstein
May 17, 2006
The Black Heart Procession does some of the darkest music out there today but at the same time it is inspiring. I got a chance to talk with the band’s singer Pall Jenkins about their new album, The Spell.
Buy The Spell
Daniel Robert Epstein: I read that Spell has been four years in the making but you also had an album last year.
Pall Jenkins: An EP came out last year. Our last full record was Amore Del Tropico, our last full length was Amore Del Tropico. We’ve put out EPs and kept touring to keep busy. So it’s been like three and a half years since our last real release.
DRE:
Why has there been such a long delay?
PJ:
Toby [Nathaniel] got married and I also built a new studio. So between all that, it just took a bit longer.
DRE:
Where’d you build the new studio?
PJ:
In downtown San Diego.
DRE:
Why’d you have to do that?
PJ:
I’d always been interested in recording and I recorded our last record so I was looking for a space. I had the equipment in my house for a while but I got to the point where I wanted to put it to use.
DRE:
Do you produce all the albums for Black Heart?
PJ:
We do it as a band or usually me and Toby focus on that. But the whole band was involved in this record. We’ve always gotten really involved, like the last two records we totally recorded and produced ourselves. The other ones we produced and worked on them but we weren’t engineering them per say.
DRE:
Why do you guys feel the need to do that?
PJ:
Usually when we work with somebody it’s because we want to and we really enjoy the idea of working with people. Everybody on our first records were friends and there were really good studios that we wanted to work with. We still made all of our decisions back then so nothing has changed. It’s more of getting interested in equipment and recording yourself and experimenting and having the time to do that. I record other bands here in town and from out of town as well. So I think it’s just a natural progression to want to record some of your own things. I bought really high end equipment for it.
DRE:
What was the inspiration for the Spell?
PJ:
I would say this one was really of love and war. In the last several years here, in between our last record and now a lot has happened in our country and I think a lot of our topics touch on love. But this time it’s a political thing though, we also play with double meanings in the lyrics so a lot of the things can be read in different ways.
DRE:
Do you guys support any political causes?
PJ:
We’re musicians so I think it’s nice to get a chance to communicate with people and express something inside of you. Just the other day I was at a demonstration here at Balboa Park for the new immigration laws so to some degree we get involved but we’re not like a super political band. I think it was expressed that way on certain songs with this record. It may be more in that direction than we’ve gone before but I think we care about things and are aware of things to a certain degree.
DRE:
It’s hard not to be political now.
PJ:
I know. Being in a band and traveling it’s like you’re constantly confronted with questions from people all around the world that assume things about America.
DRE:
A few of you guys were in another band before this, Three Mile Pilot.
PJ:
Yeah, that’s something that I and the guys from another band mixed together and made Three Mile Pilot.
DRE:
How did that happen?
PJ:
Three Mile Pilot was together for ten years and we started taking a break and doing some other music. Then Black Heart just happened really innocently and easily. We didn’t take much time writing that first record and it was really simple. Then we decided to go record and put out the first record. Then Touch and Go offered to do our second one and next thing you know we were a band. It became easier than doing Three Mile Pilot for me.
DRE:
What’s the writing process in Black Heart?
PJ:
Usually it’s me and some of the other founding members of Black Heart. I’m on guitar and we work something out. Sometimes it starts with a little guitar part or lyric and then other times it’s from the piano and a melody or some chords. We leave things pretty open. We don’t make decisions until we present things to each other and then we build them together. The new record was inspired with a few songs by the violin, we would have a lute going and some violin melody that worked over it then we built the song and all of a sudden, things start happening. It used to be that we’d just start with something and it just starts unfolding in front of us, building into this thing. So you start to recognize it. We don’t really map it out too much until we get to a certain point that we can really see what’s going on and then we recognize what needs to happen.
DRE:
One critic called The Black Hearts the musical embodiment of a Tim Burton movie.
PJ:
That’s pretty cool. I can see that. That’s not a bad compliment at all. Tim Burton’s great for sure. If he offered us to do a soundtrack, that would be amazing. I would do that in a second. I could think of plenty directors that I would like to do something for like David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Tim Burton’s up on that list for sure. That would be really appropriate.
DRE:
Were you a big outsider in high school?
PJ:
I was definitely an outsider. I grew up listening to punk rock so I was the punk rock kid in school, a little bit of the weirdo. I gravitated towards other people who were weird but I was also friendly. School was an interesting time for most people so I think I was doing a lot of experimenting and trying to find myself as a kid. But I was always interested in music and anything that was out of the norm.
DRE:
When did music strike you?
PJ:
I got interested in music very early on. My family had a piano in the house and my brother took lessons. There was an old acoustic guitar so I used to just smash the piano with the guitar and disrupt my brother from taking his lessons. They never gave me lessons but I always just made noise and fucked up my brother when he was trying to play. I kept telling my dad that I wanted an electric guitar and eventually one Christmas he broke down and bought me one. My mother was an artist and she was doing a lot of drawing and painting and got me into painting and writing. Then started picking up my guitar again later on and started doing that.
DRE:
Do you still do other things besides music?
PJ:
Yeah, I do the artwork on our records. I am involved in art. When I get the chance I do artwork but it’s not everyday but a few times a year I’ll get out and work on some art.
DRE:
You guys have a pretty big following here in America but of course it is relatively small. Has it been tough to try to get more fans?
PJ:
Yeah especially with the type of band we are. We’ve done five records at this point and each one keeps getting better. We find the crowds of people who like what we do so one thing I’m always happy about is what a wide range of people we attract. Even our record sales are pretty wide all the way around in Europe and the US. It’s not exploding in one place insanely but it does pretty well in all these different places. It makes me happy to know it gets out there and that we have the opportunities we do.
DRE:
How is it working with Touch and Go?
PJ:
It’s awesome. Touch and Go is a wonderful label. They never question anything we do as far as getting involved with the music. They help and ask what we want to do and figure out ways to make things happen. They do a 50/50 split with the artist and they have a good friendly staff.
DRE:
What do you know about SuicideGirls?
PJ:
I know that one of our member’s ex-girlfriend is a SuicideGirl now. He had to find out the hard way of somebody telling him. There are some amazingly beautiful women on there that are doing awesome things. I think it’s great to see women that are attractive that are different than some dumb magazine chick.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
The Black Heart Procession does some of the darkest music out there today but at the same time it is inspiring. I got a chance to talk with the band’s singer Pall Jenkins about their new album, The Spell.
Buy The Spell
Daniel Robert Epstein: I read that Spell has been four years in the making but you also had an album last year.
Pall Jenkins: An EP came out last year. Our last full record was Amore Del Tropico, our last full length was Amore Del Tropico. We’ve put out EPs and kept touring to keep busy. So it’s been like three and a half years since our last real release.
DRE:
Why has there been such a long delay?
PJ:
Toby [Nathaniel] got married and I also built a new studio. So between all that, it just took a bit longer.
DRE:
Where’d you build the new studio?
PJ:
In downtown San Diego.
DRE:
Why’d you have to do that?
PJ:
I’d always been interested in recording and I recorded our last record so I was looking for a space. I had the equipment in my house for a while but I got to the point where I wanted to put it to use.
DRE:
Do you produce all the albums for Black Heart?
PJ:
We do it as a band or usually me and Toby focus on that. But the whole band was involved in this record. We’ve always gotten really involved, like the last two records we totally recorded and produced ourselves. The other ones we produced and worked on them but we weren’t engineering them per say.
DRE:
Why do you guys feel the need to do that?
PJ:
Usually when we work with somebody it’s because we want to and we really enjoy the idea of working with people. Everybody on our first records were friends and there were really good studios that we wanted to work with. We still made all of our decisions back then so nothing has changed. It’s more of getting interested in equipment and recording yourself and experimenting and having the time to do that. I record other bands here in town and from out of town as well. So I think it’s just a natural progression to want to record some of your own things. I bought really high end equipment for it.
DRE:
What was the inspiration for the Spell?
PJ:
I would say this one was really of love and war. In the last several years here, in between our last record and now a lot has happened in our country and I think a lot of our topics touch on love. But this time it’s a political thing though, we also play with double meanings in the lyrics so a lot of the things can be read in different ways.
DRE:
Do you guys support any political causes?
PJ:
We’re musicians so I think it’s nice to get a chance to communicate with people and express something inside of you. Just the other day I was at a demonstration here at Balboa Park for the new immigration laws so to some degree we get involved but we’re not like a super political band. I think it was expressed that way on certain songs with this record. It may be more in that direction than we’ve gone before but I think we care about things and are aware of things to a certain degree.
DRE:
It’s hard not to be political now.
PJ:
I know. Being in a band and traveling it’s like you’re constantly confronted with questions from people all around the world that assume things about America.
DRE:
A few of you guys were in another band before this, Three Mile Pilot.
PJ:
Yeah, that’s something that I and the guys from another band mixed together and made Three Mile Pilot.
DRE:
How did that happen?
PJ:
Three Mile Pilot was together for ten years and we started taking a break and doing some other music. Then Black Heart just happened really innocently and easily. We didn’t take much time writing that first record and it was really simple. Then we decided to go record and put out the first record. Then Touch and Go offered to do our second one and next thing you know we were a band. It became easier than doing Three Mile Pilot for me.
DRE:
What’s the writing process in Black Heart?
PJ:
Usually it’s me and some of the other founding members of Black Heart. I’m on guitar and we work something out. Sometimes it starts with a little guitar part or lyric and then other times it’s from the piano and a melody or some chords. We leave things pretty open. We don’t make decisions until we present things to each other and then we build them together. The new record was inspired with a few songs by the violin, we would have a lute going and some violin melody that worked over it then we built the song and all of a sudden, things start happening. It used to be that we’d just start with something and it just starts unfolding in front of us, building into this thing. So you start to recognize it. We don’t really map it out too much until we get to a certain point that we can really see what’s going on and then we recognize what needs to happen.
DRE:
One critic called The Black Hearts the musical embodiment of a Tim Burton movie.
PJ:
That’s pretty cool. I can see that. That’s not a bad compliment at all. Tim Burton’s great for sure. If he offered us to do a soundtrack, that would be amazing. I would do that in a second. I could think of plenty directors that I would like to do something for like David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Tim Burton’s up on that list for sure. That would be really appropriate.
DRE:
Were you a big outsider in high school?
PJ:
I was definitely an outsider. I grew up listening to punk rock so I was the punk rock kid in school, a little bit of the weirdo. I gravitated towards other people who were weird but I was also friendly. School was an interesting time for most people so I think I was doing a lot of experimenting and trying to find myself as a kid. But I was always interested in music and anything that was out of the norm.
DRE:
When did music strike you?
PJ:
I got interested in music very early on. My family had a piano in the house and my brother took lessons. There was an old acoustic guitar so I used to just smash the piano with the guitar and disrupt my brother from taking his lessons. They never gave me lessons but I always just made noise and fucked up my brother when he was trying to play. I kept telling my dad that I wanted an electric guitar and eventually one Christmas he broke down and bought me one. My mother was an artist and she was doing a lot of drawing and painting and got me into painting and writing. Then started picking up my guitar again later on and started doing that.
DRE:
Do you still do other things besides music?
PJ:
Yeah, I do the artwork on our records. I am involved in art. When I get the chance I do artwork but it’s not everyday but a few times a year I’ll get out and work on some art.
DRE:
You guys have a pretty big following here in America but of course it is relatively small. Has it been tough to try to get more fans?
PJ:
Yeah especially with the type of band we are. We’ve done five records at this point and each one keeps getting better. We find the crowds of people who like what we do so one thing I’m always happy about is what a wide range of people we attract. Even our record sales are pretty wide all the way around in Europe and the US. It’s not exploding in one place insanely but it does pretty well in all these different places. It makes me happy to know it gets out there and that we have the opportunities we do.
DRE:
How is it working with Touch and Go?
PJ:
It’s awesome. Touch and Go is a wonderful label. They never question anything we do as far as getting involved with the music. They help and ask what we want to do and figure out ways to make things happen. They do a 50/50 split with the artist and they have a good friendly staff.
DRE:
What do you know about SuicideGirls?
PJ:
I know that one of our member’s ex-girlfriend is a SuicideGirl now. He had to find out the hard way of somebody telling him. There are some amazingly beautiful women on there that are doing awesome things. I think it’s great to see women that are attractive that are different than some dumb magazine chick.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
