Kevin Coral - The Witch Hazel Sound

Indiepop.it got the chance to chat with Kevin Coral, songwriter and main man behind The Witch Hazel Sound. Having published three albums (Landlocked, Flydaddy 1995, It's All True, Camera Obscura, 1998 and This World, Then the Fireworks, Hidden Agenda 2001), this Kent, Ohio based band is now one of the most striking contemporary psychedelic-pop acts, staying in between melodic research and instrumental creativity with wonderful results. Kevin talks about his inspirations, the beginnings of his band and his future projects, as well as the long-awaited reprints of The Witch Hazel Sound back catalogue.

Tell us about the beginnings of Witch Hazel. What led you to start a band, and what memories do you have of the first experimental times?

Well, the beginnigs of witch hazel go back to the early 1990's when i first got a guitar. i was 21, a very late starter for music, though i had had some piano lessons when i was a young child. i had tried my hand at other art forms throughout my school years, such as drawing, painting and writing short stories and poetry. and while i was somewhat successful at these, winnign some awards for my artwork and poetry and even selling a couple of paintings, i was never good enough in those fields - in my mind - to make a real life from them. so i was searching for my artisitc voice, and happen to buy and old electric guitar at a thrift store and began to learn to play. i only wanted to learn some chords so i could write songs. and after a couple years and while at college i met mike, who played guitar and bass and we became friends and we joined a band that was sort of like a joy division mixed with spaceman 3 type of band. that lasted about a year and then mike and quit and we put up a flyer in kent to find a singer and a drummer. we never got any response until like 6 months after we first put up the flyer but finally a drummer named brian called up and said his friend mark was a singer and that they were both into the stone roses ride, mbv, etc. that we were into at that time. whcih was good news!

we all clicked very well musically right away, though it took us a couple of years to find our true voice. a that point brian the drummer had left and mike had left for a short time as well but came back just before we releasd our first single as witch hazel. and then that single got a great response and that led us down the road to where we find ourselves now...

Do you appreciate any old time psychedelic or progressive band? Did you take inspiration from some of those bands?

Oh i love and am influenced by MANY psych and prog bands like pink floyd, love, the soft machine, mcdonald and giles, traffic, and the beatles and beach boys most of all. i comsider those 2 bands to be the orginal "progessive" rock.

i am inspired by the many rare psych compilations that have come out in the last decade or so as well. esp. the english brand of psych from the mid to late 60's.

In your opinion, how much has rock music changed in the last 10-12 years?

well, if you mean the mainstream rock scene, it has gotten completely aggressive and machismo dominated. in the indie world, i don't see really much of a change other than maybe you can be a little more "electronic" than you used to be able to be.

i guess the other big change is the internet, of course. it has made indie music much more accessible and that is a good thing, though the downside seems to be that music fans seem more willing to split off into samller and smaller factions, only "into" one kind or style of music, which is disappointing. but there are still people out there who like many different styles of music. i agree with duke ellington's assement when he said "there are only 2 kinds of music- good and bad."

What do you think about the massive presence of electronics in modern music?

well, i like it generally. i have used electronics and samplers since our first single back in '93, so i think if it's used creatively, it is wonderful. it's like any other tool, if it is used well, 'electronics' or computers can be wonderful things in music. the problem is the tendency of people to remove the human elements that make great music an emotional experience.

How do you relate to instruments and to the recording studio? In your second album "It's all true" there's a whole orchestra, with a horn section and even a sitar...


well, i just love to have as many "colors" in my music as possible. it's something i like. i love the sounds of strings and horns and for a while it was a political statement against the hemegony of guitars in rock and indie music. but mainly it was just to try and express my musical thoughts in a different way.

Titles like "it's all true" or "2 or 3 things I know about her" have a sort of cinematic quality. Quotes from Orson Welles, Nouvelle vague, ecc.. What have you tried to translate, from Cinema, in sounds and lyrics?

i am so very much influenced by people like orson welles and the whole of the nouvelle vague and specifcally jean-luc godard. i gues the main way i was influenced is the way that they were an antidote to the staid, boring, safe way people made movies and i was inspired to try and do go do that in music. that and the way that they are are 'auteurs.' i very much subscibe to the auteur theory in movies and in music. yes, i or brian wilson or phil spector or whomever, can't do it alone and we are dependent and thankful to have talented people around us to help us realize our vision but it is best to have the one vision. i hope i don't sound too pompous here!! nor i am comparing my talents to brian wilson or phil specotr, just that those are good examples of auteurs.

and i am also, in a more direct way, influenced by the soundtracks of films. ennio morricone and piero piccioni are gods to me! the italian soundtrack composers of the 60's and 70's are some of the greatest maestro's ever, in my opinion. at their best, there music conveyes emotions even better than the moving image!

Your first album "landlocked" will forever be a wonderful act of musical figurative romanticism, of a visionarity both intense and poignant. It has a sense of myth, a contemplation and a poetics that will be present in every following record by the band. How much of your music is made of memory and magic?

well, thank you for the kind words. i think my music is made up very much of memory, even though the memories are often fleeting and somewhat indistinct. some notes and chords just resonate with me and i have some distant memories of responding to music in my childhood the same way, even though i never thought i'd be a musican at that point! ;-)

as for magic, well, i don't think i can answer that. if it feels like magic for the listener than that's all that really matters to me...

Mark F is no mere interpreter, he tells very cleverly the music of Witch Hazel. Did you have to work hard to achieve this cohesion or is it a casual miracle?

It actually just happened more than us working on it. thankfully my music inspired him very easily, i guess. he has a unique ability to come up with great, and unexpected, melodies and a unique way around a song structure. the thing that disappoints me so much is that some reviews over the course of the witch hazel sound's exsitence have singled out mark's vocals as some sort of weak spot, which i disagree with whole-heartedly. i think his voice and style are unique and great. but many unique talents are not recognized in their time, i guess.

Could you name some contemporary bands you like and you would like to work with?

Well, i like quite a few. there is a swedish band called nanook of the north who sent me their demo and it was great so i sent it to our american label parasol and now they are putting it out. it's very good...i like the super furry animals, the beta band, lone pidgeon, stereolab, broadcast, cinematic orchestra, bart davenport, richard hawley, high llamas, the kingsbury manx. air, bertrand burgalat, sondre lerche, mull historical society, beachwood sparks/all night radio/the tyde, jim o'rourke, isotope 217, plush/liam hayes and some others i'm sure i'm forgetting!
I would like to work with any and all of those people! haha! i would aslo like to come over to italia and produce some italiano indie-pop bands. anything to go back to Italia, which is my favorite country in europe! ;-)

oh, and i want to do the soundtrack score for the next sofia coppola film as well! and remix ennio morricone and piero piccioni songs! ;-)

Have you tried to test yourself against new digital technologies? Do they possess more or less in relation to traditional instruments?

Yeah, we have a couple of computers in the studio but we mainly use them for some editing and for some plug-in's. we don't record on them at all. we record on all analog gear and analog tape. our new studio, the endless summer institute of sound, is mostly made up of analog vintage gear from the 50's through the 70's. those pieces of equipment have stood the test of time and are better than almost any new piece of gear you can buy now. and we have no digital keyboards, only analog. they just sound better to our ears.

What will be your (yours and the band's) next projects?

well, i just finished a remix of two songs from club 8 from their last album 'strangely beautiful.' i'm not sure when or where they will appear but i'll let you know...
i'm also working on an album that i did with laura watling. hopefully that will be our before the end of the year.
I recently recorded some demos for april march and i hope to do a project with her soon. nothing definite yet but possibly in the future.
I also have written some songs for an album by a french artist called jean-emmanuel deluxe. he has gotten people like the high llamas and van dyke parks to also write songs for his album, so i am in good company. i may also be remixing the van dyke parks song of of that album for a single in the future.
I also have a couple projects that are still in the planning stages but i will have news of them soon.
And I also did some remixing and "analog assistance" at my studio for the debut album by an american psych-pop band called the new planet trampoline. they are on elephant stone records, who also just released a delta compliation in america!

And i have an album's worth of instrumental tracks that will form the basis of the next witch hazel sound release. i think...

Oh, and our last album, "this world, then the fireworks" will be re-issued in a couple months with a new cover and 2 bonus tracks, on the french label called euro-visions to all of europe. so italiano fans can get the album a little easier than before. there will also be a video that will be coming out for the album soon as well.

Fabio

Links:

The Witch Hazel Sound website: www.bubblegumsmile.com
Euro-Visions website: www.euro-visions.net