BARKING BARDS

(The craft, discipline, & obsession of songwriting in the Pacific Northwest)

by Sheryl Diane

About a decade ago, two bands fell apart and the remnants, a bass player, Paul Hinklin, and a drummer, Evan Schiller, faked it for the sake of a good gig at the Mural Amphitheatre. They didn't intend to play another gig, but the duo accidentally went forward. I first met up with them about a year later at their Bumbershoot debut in 1990, and I was going, "why are you on the Jazz Stage?" or something like that to Evan, who resides commendably on the business side of the band. He laughed, "I have no idea." With my pleading encouragement, they finally played up in Bellingham and when they got there, they had a new addition. A lanky, stringbean of a saxophone player that sported a jet black spiky crew cut and wild Barney Google eyes. He had joined up with them after an all-nighter inspired jam following the Living Color concert. He kinda looked a bit wacked back then, so Erik got scarified into Skerik, a moniker that stuck and is now etched forever on the underground wall. Sadhappy had a unique, hauntingly powerful sound, no van, a penchant for losing record deals, and became the laudable fringe-footed underdog of the supremely grunge-oriented scene of the early 90's in Seattle. They took gigs in unusual places like The New City Theatre and never relied on the same 3 hip clubs to try to make their music or their name known. The word got out. Their shows eventually sold out. But then what happened? Over peppermint tea, I urged Paul Hinklin to confess the history, tracking back to Bach and forward to now. And I'm damn glad I used a calming herb for this one…

SD/ Sadhappy has a tenacity for staying alive after other bands die, let's start with the lull of no Skerik and how many bands with unmentionable names you had to live through.

PH/ Oh, you want to hear about the dark years? Some of the band names were the highlight! We definitely fell off the horse after we broke up that first time (January of 1993) and that was just because of all the label pressure.

SD/ You had label interest, how did they approach you, I mean how were they going to try to market Sadhappy--a composite of bass, drums and saxophone?

PH/ We ran into a lot of opposition because labels didn't know how to market us. We didn't have a cute singer or guitar player or anything like that, so basically they came to Seattle and saw how the crowd responded. That was enough to make them listen to what we had to say, seemed like we knew what we were doing. We actually had an agreement in June of 1992, but that got sabotaged by an unscrupulous managerial assistant.

SD/ We'll 'ah….name no names?! (laughs)

PH/ Not until I'm safely out of the country and have an alibi . . . . (under his breath Paul growls)….sink him in the bay! We met with Interscope in New York City and their guy asked "where do you see yourself in 5 years" and I said "Fuck that, if you put us on Saturday Night Live, we'll give you a platinum record." And he went to see the show that night and said ok, let's do a deal. We got back to Seattle, had a meeting and I told everybody, you know, we've been playing hard to get with these guys and that's why they're eating out of our hand, so nobody even pick up a telephone. And this guy that was working with our manager, went behind all of our backs, called up the President of the label and played hardball with him and told him that if we didn't get 3 times the amount of money we were going to agree to, the deal was off. So, he didn't like being pushed around and pretty much said fuck you and your band, that's the end of the deal. 2 or 3 months later, I finally found out what really happened. We went to L. A. and New York City and played for all these labels. They couldn't figure it out because we were doing everything wrong, but by doing everything wrong, the crowd reacted and they could see that. We sold ourselves with the live show--and the labels knew we were on to something.

SD/ Did Skerik leave the band for Critter's Buggin'?

PH/ No, actually Critter's got going in '93 after Sadhappy had already broke up. And we had all been through so much bullshit together that we didn't even talk to each other for almost a year. I mean, god, we were all in our mid-twenties and we didn't know shit!!! All of a sudden, we were being assaulted by strange people all the time talking money. Skerik started playing with Critter's Buggin' and I started playing with Son of Man. I did solo shows for about a year. I don't know how this looks in an interview, but the only time I didn't play an empty room was a Sadhappy show….(bewildered, Paul shakes his head).

SD/ Well finally, your musician's quote! "The only time I didn't play an empty room…." (we laugh)

PH/ There you go, that's about the size of it.

SD/ Well when it works, it really works….

PH/ Well that's why I'm really happy to have it back now that we have Michael, the band has a lot different flavor but it's still potent. And people still like it. The press is really good from the recordings. There was kind of an adjustment period because the old crowd came in and they didn't see Skerik and were obviously disappointed, but what can you do, you can't call down a chorus of angels to help your ass (laughs).

SD/ Why did you choose bass, you're such, as one would say, a "busy" bass player, did you start on guitar?

PH/ No, well technically my first instrument was like this $3 acoustic that I got at a garage sale but I took the top two strings off and tuned the bottom four strings down as low as I could get 'em and I was playing bass. I was always into the bass from the time I heard The Beatles and Zeppelin. Loved the sound and the feel of it. It's funny, I have a real reputation for being a busy player but it all depends on who I'm playing with. If it's Skerik, then yeah, I'm totally over the top but if it's a songwriter, I stick to the Tony Levin school--keep it as simple as possible.

SD/ How did you meet Michael Manring?

PH/ He called us.

SD/ Really!?

PH/ There was this friend of ours that wrote for this newspaper called The Charlatan, somewhere in the eastern part of Canada. Michael was on tour and our friend said 'hey, you got to check out this band from Seattle'--he put on "Depth Charge". Michael was so impressed that he just called us up and said hey, do you want to jam? That's how it went. He flew up here (from San Francisco) and checked us out at arm's length for quite sometime. We met with him in 1994 and didn't play our first show until '96. As a professional musician, he's all over the place. He's in Mexico City right now….It took us 3 or 4 years to figure out how to play with him because his harmonic sense is completely different from anybody I've ever played with. He knows his keys and scales and stuff but you never know when he's going to change the mode on you. Hooking up with Michael has been like going back to school for my Masters. He's one of the most intelligent people I've ever met.

SD/ So, Manring, I think of Windham Hill?

PH/ But you'd never know he was on Windham Hill by the way he's playing now. Yeah, we tweaked him. He wanted to be tweaked which is cool. When we met him, he was in a stylistic quandry with the New Age tag and he definitely wanted to get out of that. After "Good Day Bad Dream" his style really took a change.

SD/ Is songwriting uncommon for a bass player? I doubt that my readers will think of that many bass players identified as songwriters.

PH/ There's been a few of them, you know, Mingus, Jaco, Paul McCartney. When it comes to songwriting, I have a lot of different devices that I use. I write all kinds of songs--skull crush from the Son of Man days and piano love ballads that I don't play for anybody. Most of the Sadhappy tunes are written on bass.

SD/ When I see Sadhappy, I think so much about the undercurrent of melody, but the bass as a melodic instrument is all but forgotten isn't it?

PH/ It's funny the idea of the bass being melodic isn't new by any stretch, if you listen to Beethoven, the parts he was writing are gorgeous. In some of those symphonies, it's as if he wrote bass solos and they're tough parts, yeah Beethoven's a bitch! Some of the best fundamentals a musician can have is playing Bach. The foundation of Western harmony, right there. Great for your chops, good for your songwriting. I learned a lot about chord voicing and counterpoint and all that good stuff.

SD/ In the Sadhappy of today, how's the writing balanced. Are you writing, Michael, or are you writing together?

PH/ Ah, all of the above! He brings songs in and we learn them, change 'em around. I have pieces I write and bring in, same thing. We also write a lot of stuff out of collective improv jams and we try to record everything, so if we come up with a good riff or accidental two-part thing we can keep it. Sometimes we just sit down and pull out the tools and just start building a tune, it's a very communal system, I prefer to work that way. My band members keep me honest. I can't possibly see every perspective on my own. If I have a couple of different detached observers that can get a different perspective, they might call me on something that was missing. We're one of the true democracies that actually works!

SD/ With you and Michael both being bass players, how does your playing differ?

PH/ I'm a lot more visceral, he's a lot more cerebral.

SD/ Oh boy, now what do you mean visceral?!

PH/ More gut level, primal, emotional. Michael is a lot more studied and calculating. I'll smoke a bowl before a set and he won't even drink coffee. We're pretty much opposites.

SD/ Have you gotten this latest release out to labels?

PH/ No, what with the way pop music is and the position that labels are in now, it's highly unlikely that anyone would pick that record up. We're focusing our sights on (touring) Europe. I've already sent some press packets over to Berlin. There's a writer over there that's an old fan of Sadhappy, he got our new one and got all excited….Michael had a good point, (in regards to Europe), he said the problem in America is that music is seen as entertainment, not an art form, bottom line. We've always felt that there's a happy medium between art and critical or financial success . . . .We're still totally out there on the fringe.

SD/ I really liked the Bumbershoot show (99), you have a kind of understated presence on stage, but when you talk you're funny and then this spoken word thing . . . .?

PH/ Yeah, I hang my ass in the breeze on every show. I always go out on a limb, that's where you get the good stuff. It's a lot of fun to get a laugh out of a room too. That was a dream audience.

SD/ How much do you actually improvise?

PH/ Well it's changing, it used to be a lot more. The Bumbershoot show was about 60%, it all depends on how comfortable we feel, that the room is …. there's definitely a level . . . .

SD/ Of acceptance?

PH/ Exactly, you know if people want to hear brand spankin' new, immediately composed---then you go for it, you know! It depends, if you're in a bad acoustical environment, you're usually better off playing rehearsed stuff. Improv . . . .there's so many little subtleties that you need to hear to get that conversation going….another reason that we improvise is that we do not have time to adequately rehearse. Michael's so busy he may fly in the day before the show and we have to nail the tough parts of the tunes, play the show . . . .then he hangs around for a couple days to record and that's when we work on the music, after the show! (laughs)

SD/ I like recklessness on stage!

PH/ That's not the way I'd like to do it, but that's the way it falls. I mean you want to pull off jams that sound like rehearsed tunes! That harkens back to the old days when Evan and I didn't have a bunch of material, some of the best training we ever had was trying to fool 300 people that we knew what we were doing. We never planned on doing a second show, but people liked it. All we've succeeded in doing the last 10 years is, we've made enough money on the discs to keep putting out discs and we don't lose money. I think of Sadhappy as a form of community sevice because I haven't made a dime on it in 10 years. Still I love to do it, people pay hard earned money to see a good show and it's my responsibility to give them one. I like Sadhappy, I love it because I know it brings something positive into the world, because when I wake up the next morning after playing a Sadhappy show, I feel good, like I did a good thing.

* * *

The Sadhappy.com domain is not operational just yet, but you can check into this one until their go-live date, it has news, a complete discography and a list of upcoming shows: http://members.aol.com/periscoper.

Email Sheryl Diane

Visit Sheryl Diane's Website

BARKING BARDS #1 - j r
The craft, discipline, & obsession of songwriting in the Pacific Northwest, a new column by Sheryl Diane