Austin Sound

An Austin Sound favorite, Leatherbag unveils his fourth album, Love and Harm, on Thursday, April 17, at the Cactus Cafe. The Houston expatriate has been combining his vision of integrity and American folk with whatever he finds in other musical realms. With a slight, Texan drawl that just embodies the good old Americanism that’s so tough to easily find in music, Leatherbag (aka Randy Reynolds) met with Abhinav Kumar, whose radio show, Tons of Fun, you can tune in every Thursday evening from 8:00-8:30pm on KVRX 91.7FM. Leatherbag will be live and in-studio on Tons of Fun on this Thursday, April 10. You can also download “Stand Close,” an exclusive outtake from the new album here.

The weekend before, Leatherbag had given Abhinav an electronic copy of Love and Harm.

Austin Sound: I haven’t given anyone a copy of the album.

Leatherbag: No, it’s fine if you do. That’s the thing – I put it up there knowing that other people are going to get it for free, and that’s fine. We’re in a position right now where all I want is for people to hear it; I’m not here to make money. The first thing is you finally get something you want people to hear, and you’re really comfortable with it – you just let them have it. And then, maybe the next record, they’ll buy it.

It’s like a laboratory kind of feel because no one knows what works. Other than touring.

AS: Are you going on tour anywhere?

L: Yes, we’re planning in July to go on an east coast tour and come back. I’m going with some people I know, and they know specific places where we can get gigs. Also, I was talking to Daytrotter about doing a session for them. Daytrotter is a Web site; they leave all the sessions up there for free. They record you for free. You do four tracks, they have engineers, and everybody’s there. Two to three hours, and they feed you. It’s up there with Pitchfork, as many hits as it gets per day. It’s crazy. A good opportunity to cut some stuff you didn’t cut on the record.

AK: What’s the significance of your album’s title – “Love and Harm?”

L: Every title for every record I’ve made just kind of comes up out of nowhere. This record was fun because I decided I was sick of singer- songwriters and sick of people staying in their pocket and their comfort zone. I decided I was going to write every kind of song that I know how to write. And if you go through the record every track sounds very different from the last one, and there’s a little bit of every kind of music that I enjoy on there. The first track is very much rooted in the Velvet Underground and Modern Lovers. You go to the second track, and that’s rooted in early Beegee’s and Revolver-era Beatles stuff.

AS: The song “LOL” was very different from most of your other songs – a little bit poppier.

L: That one’s deeply rooted in modern American pop – bands like Wilco. That to me is very much American music – odd lyrical sensibilities. We recorded the songs two, three different ways. We said, “Let’s take the song, and let’s do it straight, like, all an out rock n roll song, or let’s do it as a folk song, or let’s do it as a pop song.”

But that comes from Elvis Costello. He’s reissued all of his records, and the second and third discs are the same songs. But they’re done as ska and country – but they’re the same song. It helps you musically. I can just take this song, and we can change the tempo or the drum beat or the bass line. All of a sudden the song has a different sensibility.

AS: When you played at the KVRX benefit in the fall, you sounded very strongly Dylan.

L: I can take any of these songs and play them as folk songs, and that’s how they’re written. I really feel like people who write songs, we’ve got to get out of this place where we’re not just doing the same thing all of the time. That’s what I’m trying not to do – I don’t want anyone to expect a certain, specific thing from me.

When we made Love Me Like the Devil, all those songs are written with the exact same chords. That was the point of that record. I used all the same four chords; there’s only four chords in the entire record, and I tried to write as many songs as I could within that four chord structure. And it was hard, but it was a lot of fun.

And in this record, I started finding bands like The Feelies and listening to The Modern Lovers, but also listening to lots of powerpop. Powerpop was a movement in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It’s really dorky stuff, but my musical taste has changed. I’ve put that stuff aside. People have been doing that singer- songwriter stuff forever, there’s gotta be a way to move it and change it. This isn’t some groundbreaking thing, but I’ve seen a lot of shows in town. I wish more and more people would experiment like this.

AS: Do you have plans to look in other countries for different styles of music?

L: My girlfriend is learning Spanish and is studying to be a Spanish professor, so there’s a lot more Spanish in the house. I’m starting to get into a lot of 60’s Spanish music, and some of that has got some awesome hooks. And once you understand what they’re saying, it’s really cool. The beats are very different, and the rhythms are very different. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to shake American rock and roll. There’s something so powerful about it. It’s very intelligent.

There’s a lot of bands that are extremely modern, and that’s not something I can really grab onto. The Octopus Project and those bands are really modern bands, and they know exactly what they’re doing. And I really honor that; those people really got their thing going on. The scene that I was in before this was a lot of people would go up, get a guitar, and try and do what’s been done. You can take what’s been done, but you gotta shift it.

AS: What other records have you released?

L: The first record was So Long Sweethearts, and that’s out of print. And it probably will never be in print again. [Laughs]. Then we made Love Me Like the Devil, and then we made Nowhere Left to Run. This is our fourth release in two years.

AS: I’ve seen the “On Down the Line” video. Can you go into detail about the production of that video?

L: A friend of mine named Billy McCartney, he went to school here, and he’s been an aspiring filmmaker. I got with him and just said, “Hey, I want to do this, thing.” I was kind of hesitant about doing a video, but he put everything together. We went to a neighborhood in north Austin. I told him I just wanted it to be like The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

AS: The old Nickelodean show?

L: Yeah. It was great; the whole neighborhood was out there; no one griped or complained or anything. We had a crew of 40 people. It was a lot of fun, but dude, it was really hot. That was one day of shooting, and I refused to do anymore.

AS: You mentioned earlier that you have an odd work schedule. How do you fit in practicing or composing music?

L: Well, I have a lot of time on my own in between programs; I work on the top floor. That’s where my writing really helps. I’ve been reading a lot of short stories and fiction; I steal a lot of lines from short stories.

AS: Any books or authors in particular?

L: Yeah. Russell Banks is a huge influence. Raymond Carver is probably the largest influence. Joyce Carol Oates. Flannery O’Conner. There’s a new writer I like a lot named Michael Chabon; he wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. He uses words that are totally modern, and you don’t know what they mean. He’s a great writer.

I’ve stopped reading novels, so I do a lot short fiction up there. The main thing I do at work is I usually write a bunch of nonsense ideas I have, but then I edit them for months. Raymond Carver said, “You write like the chair’s about to be pulled out from under you.” That’s the way I do it. You have a window of opportunity, and just run with it. A lot of it is garbage, but over time you can develop it. And there’s a guitar up there. I really take a lot of time with words because words are really central to what we do. I work really hard on it.

I also play Castlevania 2 and Super Mario 3.

AS: When Hurricane Rita came, you moved to Austin from Houston?

L: Yeah, I moved up here when they were evacuating Houston.

AS: Do you have anything you’d like to add?

L: We’re excited about this thing. I’m really trying hard to get people to hear it. I know for sure we’ll have the records in by April 17, and then I’ll get them into stores; they’ll be up on iTunes.

                  - Interview by Abhinav Kumar

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