Austin Sound

This month, the Charles Potts Magic Windmill band released their sophomore LP, The Golden Calves. Like most of their work, The Golden Calves carries a biting wit that balances the narratives between irony and sincerity, emphasized by the group’s impressively tight, dead-pan harmonies. With the now-sextet adding drums and more power to their live sound, the Windmill Band expertly pushes boundaries of both genre and taste with their famously self-described “New York City style experimental country.” We spoke with Windmill Band founders Dirk Michener and Travis Catsull for an expectedly tongue-in-cheek explanation of their sound, the band’s origins, the organization of Business Deal Records, and the wonders of sleeping in ditches and cars.

Austin Sound: So how did the band actually come together.
Dirk Michener: We’ve been friends for a long time, and our group of friends, we just always write songs together. Was it in Walla Walla [Washington]?
Travis Catsull: That’s basically when we started it, but we had been writing songs before that.
DM: We’d just get together and party and make up songs in big groups.

AS: Y’all started in Walla Walla? I thought y’all were both from Texas.
DM: I’m from Fort Worth
TC: And I’m from East Texas. [Dirk] was in a band with James Oswald in high school, so we knew each other then, and I was always on the road and would stop in when Dirk was going to college in Denton. Dirk and I would just sit on the balcony and make up songs then.
AS: So this has unofficially been around for years?
TC: Yeah, really. And when I got to Walla Walla, I had a bungalow there; Charles Potts had given us this list of things that he needed back from us, and it was like 4 chairs, 2 fans…so we were like, “let’s just make up a song with all this shit.”

AS: So how did you know Charles Potts?
TC: I met Charles Potts when I was living in LA. He saw my poetry ‘zine [Haggard and Halloo]. I had never met him, but he sent me a check and said, “I want all your back issues.” So I sent all the issues and he invited me out to a poetry reading in LA. So me and my girlfriend went down there and we struck up a conversation and became friends. I moved to Europe, and when I came back from Europe, he offered me the assistant editor position at his national poetry magazine.
AS: What was his magazine?
TC: It was called The Temple. It was spiritual poetry, but it wasn’t really spiritual poetry.
DM: It was a lot of Asian poetry that was translated into English
TC: Really weird stuff. He’s got a really high taste that borders sort of on academic poetry, so when I came in I was more into doing more off-the-cuff and southern stuff. And then we went back to Walla Walla, ‘cause Dirk was on tour and I went up there because Charles’ wife got killed and he needed some help doing shit, so I ran his bookstore. And we lived in the Temple, actually. There was a place called the Temple that was a hundred year old Masonic Temple, so we all lived in there and ended up making more songs. That’s when we cut the 45 [Wyoming]. Then the Windmill Band went on tour from Seattle to Olympia and back to Texas, and we’ve been here ever since. What did we drive? A ’79 Toyota Tercel hatchback?
DM: Yeah. They get great gas mileage. I mean, it was getting like 38 miles to the gallon.
TC: The first eight shows were with this band called Satellite Bingo, a keyboard band, so that was a weird mix. But I think we’ve just gotten used to playing with bands that we don’t really sound like.

AS: That kind of brings up the question: Y’all call yourselves “New York City experimental country,” so what the hell does that mean?
TC: Well we couldn’t think of any genre that we fit.
DM: Yeah, it’s important to have a classification, and so you use a lot of loaded terms. Every term is loaded. It will bring up certain things with critics or other people because it’s so loaded. So we made it up, and at some point I tried to explain it…but it’s just a bunch of bullshit.
TC: And everyone says, “Oh, so you’re from New York?” and we go, “No, we just play New York City style experimental country.” So it does help to confuse people. But really, it’s just stoner country, or it’s “workin’ man’s country for lovers.” And we also think that it’s really fuckin’ funny.
DM: It’s funny that it caught on.

AS: So when did all the other guys join the band? What’s it up to now – five of you?
DM: There’s six of us. Ish [Archbold] is the new guy. He plays keyboards and sings in Coma in Algiers.
TC: He’s kind of the intern right now.
DM: Before it was Reed [Posey]. Reed was the intern.
AS: So Reed’s been officially promoted?
TC: Oh yeah, Reed’s been upgraded. Reed did the same thing though. He wanted to be in the band, so we just said alright.
DM: I don’t even think that he asked. We were just playing at Trophy’s one night and I just asked him if he would like to come sit on stage and not do anything, because I thought it would make us more comfortable or something. And he sat up there and didn’t do anything, just sat.
TC: But then he did that for like the 3 or 4 shows.
DM: And everyone was saying, “What’s that guy up there for? What’s he doing?”
AS: So what are the requirements for being in the Windmill Band?
TC: I guess we have to at least know you.
DM: You gotta like to party.
TC: You have to come to at least one of our rare practices.
DM: You have to have at least some kind of inclination of wanting to do it.
TC: That’s the main thing. If you want to be in the band really bad, and just keep asking us or just get up on stage and sit there…
DM: And you have to ask when practices are, because we probably won’t tell you.
TC: We really don’t practice that much just because Dirk and I have been singing the songs for so long. But when we have a full band, it’s kind of important that we at least practice once before the show.

AS: So how many folks are singing harmony now?
DM: I think everybody sings. It’s kind of hard to tell, because sometimes Preston [Dukes] will just not want to sing one night, or sometimes Tim [Bond] will just not want to sing.
TC: Tim usually at least sings on the choruses, even if he doesn’t have a mic. After a while, and if you know us, I think the songs really start to make more sense with time, and while the lyrics can be complicated on certain songs, especially the breath, we all need to at least relatively breath at the same time, because we’re saying a lot of lyrics. So it kinda goes fast and there’s pauses and we say words differently and we don’t use a lot of hard consonants and let one word bleed into the next, or say the word wrong on purpose. All kinds of weird shit.

AS: I think the thing that strikes me most about the songs is the back and forth between sincerity and irony, and often both at the same time. Who does most of the song writing?
DM: We do most of it together.
TC: Dirk and I have done probably 90% of the songs. On the last 45, Dirk wrote one song by himself, and I think all the other songs Dirk and I wrote together. And on the new album, Dirk and I wrote all the songs except “Robin Blue Eggshells” and “Winslow Boy.” I wrote those with James Oswald. We’ll combine songs sometimes that I wrote with somebody else or that Dirk wrote on his own.
DM: There’s a lot of songwriting going on between all of our friends, and if something’s really good and it’s not being used, there’s no reason not to use it.
TC: And we’ll say, “Hey, that kind of sounds like a Windmill Band song” and we’ll change it around a little bit. Or Pataphysics will take one, like “Jesus Stabbed a Wolf” - that was one we all wrote together and then Pat took it for his. Jam Engine took one of the songs, “Juanita.” Since we do write so many songs collectively, if someone isn’t using a song, someone else will use it.

AS: So how much of the Windmill Band is just trying out these new songs?
TC: It’s a pretty quick process for us. I think the longest it’s ever taken us to write a song is 10 or 15 minutes. Then it takes us several months to actually figure out how to deliver it well. The songs come very naturally to us, because our sense of humor and our lifestyles intertwine so much with the lyrics.
AS: So is that usually the starting point, just y’all sitting around?
DM: A lot of time it’s very topical, like “let’s write a song about this situation.”
TC: Like “Goodbye Son,” that song came about because we were joking about if my truck broke down in some city, I’d just start living there. So that was the beginning of the song: “My truck broke down ten years ago.” And we just keep writing the story.
DM: Same with “I Live in My Car.” People think living in a car sucks, and it’s not the easiest thing, but it would be easy to love it.
TC: And when we were writing that song, we remembered this poet that we saw at the Roasted Goat Festival that was actually living out of his car, so I think we lended that memory to it a little bit. He was driving like an ’85 Mercury or something, a really kinda shitty car.
DM: But he loved it! He was a teacher and during the summer he’d just load up his car and drive around.

AS: I’m curious about the reactions that y’all get. I feel in Austin y’all are familiar enough now that people kind of know what y’all are doing, but when y’all are touring and do a song like “Goodbye Son,” what are the audiences like?
DM: Yeah, we’ve had some bad responses.
AS: Like what?
DM: Well, we’ll finish playing and it’s just dead silence. You can hear crickets and look at people’s faces and they’re just bummed out. You can tell that that just bummed them out and there is no way that we’re going to get them back on track.
TC: It’s because they take it so serious. They’re like, “Is that true?” and we don’t say anything. But we’re just telling a story. And c’mon, there’s been a lot worse shit happen in country songs than somebody getting cancer, but when you hear it and the way we deliver it, it sounds like, “Man, you’re dad’s gonna die.”
DM: The best shows are small rooms, where everybody’s sitting on the floor being quiet. Otherwise it’s just a fiasco.
TC: And then Hollywood, that was one of the worst. They were expecting like speed rocker country, cowboys with flames on their hats.
DM: It wasn’t at all our scene.

AS: Dirk, how long have you been doing Cavedweller?
DM: I’ve been doing Cavedweller since 1995, and started playing live in ’97. That was in Denton, and I moved to Austin in 2002.
AS: When did y’all start up Business Deal?
DM: Business Deal was started by me and Smokey Farris, probably in 1993. Me and Smokey have been friends and collaborated musically since junior high school.
TC: But y’all started releasing tapes under Business Deal in ’88, right?
DM: Yeah, probably ’89 I’d say. But not under Business Deal – we didn’t call it that. We all decided to move to Austin collectively in 2002 or 2003. It was a migration to collaborate and work on Business Deal together.

AS: So is Business Deal a conglomerate between all of y’all? How exactly does it work?
DM: A lot of it is every band for themselves, but we just try and support each other, but not necessarily financially.
TC: And when there’s a decision to be made, there’s about 8 of us that will decide on it. So there’s no real head of operations or person in charge, it’s more of a democracy.
DM: There’s seniority involved, but it’s also more about who’s got the best idea or who’s more aggressively pushing their idea.

AS: With the new album, was there something particular that you were going for as opposed to the last. Y’all have been working on this and had these songs for a while.
DM: Yeah, we had about 15 songs, and we just whittled it down to 10.
TC: And there were some other songs that we didn’t even bother to record, and we saved some songs because we want to follow this album with a 7”. So some of the songs that we’ve found have gotten a good response, like “Ain’t Seen Nothin’”, will be on the 7”. Maybe “Waterbed” and “Divining Rod.”
DM: I don’t know about “Divining Rod”
TC: I like “Divining Rod.”
DM: It sounds like “9 to 5”!
TC: I know it does!
AS: So when are y’all planning on putting out the 7”
TC: Probably later this year, in the fall. After listening to this album and then listening to Becky, I realized we got a lot more mellow. It’s not as aggressive, but I think the songs and the production and the way that we sing them have certainly improved. It’s a remarkable difference about how much more effort we put into it. It did take a long time, but I think because we really felt the way the album sounded, really just laid back and not very aggressive about anything. So I think if the album does anything, it certainly mirrors the last couple of years of our lives and how we’ve gone about everything involved with the Windmill Band.

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