TS: How does starting a new band today compare to when you were starting out?
As far as what I'm achieving and what I'm getting from the music; it's basically the same. Having been a musician for almost 30 years now, the delineation between the private jet vs. the van has become very blurry, and it's just become about music.
There's differences economically, obviously, and there's difficulty in facilitating a living for the members of Skysaw. I feel fortunate to have lived through the 90s when things were much more lucrative, and I'm able to sustain myself based on that period. But as far as the impetus for playing music, I think it's basically the same. We're really searching for a way to perfect our craft, to do something different, to evolve as musicians and to play it in front of people who are appreciative of the resonance of it.
I'm a drummer. I love to play music, and I like to do it in as many different ways as I can. I think oftentimes people confuse monetary success with success. For me, I'm always seeking out what gives me the most satisfaction musically, and I try to look at the financial reward lastly because if you turn it around, it gets to be very de-motivating.
What's interesting is that now that the fantasy bubble of "American Idol" has been kind of burst, what you see out in the current climate is a lot of dedicated musicians who are out there for the right reasons. Whereas post-1999/2000, there were a lot of people out there in the business trying to make a quick buck, thinking, "Okay now that I have a Pro Tools rig, I can write a song. I'm gonna get a video, blah, blah, blah." I think now that that fantasy has been kind of popped, I think you see a real dedication out there of people working on their craft. I don't think it'll be long before the next kind of Bob Dylan comes along, just because I think that the climate is insistent on people being that dedicated in order to survive.
TS: How is the collaborative process with Skysaw different than with the Pumpkins?
JC: With Smashing Pumpkins we were primarily working on the work of one writer and the rest of the band was in charge of arranging the material. With Skysaw everyone kind of writes. Everybody brings songs in and we all work on each other's songs. It's really more of a band situation. More of a collaborative effort insomuch that everybody; myself, Mike Reina and Anthony Pirog, are all songwriters. With the Pumpkins, it really got to the point where Billy was writing so much material that that's all we really worked on.
TS: You wrote a lot of the music, and then brought Mike in the handle most of the lyrics, is that right?
JC: Mike wrote all the lyrics on the record, and that's not to say that there's not lyrics that I've written for the songs that I wrote, because some of the songs on the Skysaw record have alternative lyrics. I have always felt as a musician and a song writer that, unless it's a cover, if it's a song that Mike's going to work on, I feel he should have an investment in the lyrics and what the lyrics are saying. Obviously, for me to tell him, "Here's the lyrics, I want you to sing about this uncomfortable experience" . . . I didn't want to do that to anybody, and especially my friend Mike. He's a fantastic lyricist, and l don't have any problems with the stuff that he writes, and I love the melodies that he comes up with as well. The music is the messege of the band.
TS: After working with Smashing Pumpkins where Billy Corgan is the frontman in the spotlight, what is it like to shift into more of a leadership position?
JC: It's not a lot different than some of the other stuff I've done. With my other band, The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, I was band leader.
For me it's all music. It either makes sense musically, or it doesn't. I don't really think, "Oh, I've got to be the face of the band now."
I feel like being in the Pumpkins was a harder job than being in Skysaw just because I had 20 years of legacy to uphold all the time,
and I felt like I had to be a certain kind of person to be in that band.
That necessarily wasn't the person I had become as an individual. With Skysaw it really gives me free reign to be myself and not have to deal with any preconceived notions of what the people in Skysaw are like. Being in the Pumpkins, you are a Pumpkin, so to speak. You go to work. You put that hat on, and you become that person. With this, it's a lot more open and I feel it's more representative of how I feel day-to-day.
TS: Skysaw's sound is a departure from what most people have heard from you. Is this truer to the music you've always preferred to play, or is this what inspires you at this phase in your life?
JC: There's a lot of other stuff I'm writing right now that doesn't necessarily fit into the Skysaw mold. Skysaw isn't there to become a conduit for everything I write or that Mike writes or that Anthony writes. Anthony has a very successful free jazz career. He plays in New York City all the time with a bunch of free jazz people, but it's not like he's going to bring that music to Skysaw. I still do stuff with Billy Mohler that's based on the Complex stuff, more jazz fusion. Skysaw just represents one facet of the music that I like. It's an outlet for that kind of music, it not the end-all of what I see as the penultimate version of music.
TS: There are many people who after finding great success with a band or a sound, continue in that vein. What drives you to take on new challenges?
JC: That's a hard question to answer. My favorite artists throughout the years have always been willing to take chances and kind of reinvent themselves as musicians. Playing pop music and pop arrangements, and playing the same songs over and over again--you can only take it so far.
I think for me as an evolving musician I'm always looking to play stuff that's different. I'm not saying that anything's right or wrong, I'm just saying that for me in particular stuff tends to get old kind of fast. It's hard for me to explain to other people why I keep wanting to change things, but it's just the way I am.
Also, I think it's important for me to show my kids and my students that it doesn't have to stop once you get famous or become a rock star or you make 10 million dollars, whatever the case may be. You can use those things as a stepping stone to do things that are even more crazy. As far as I'm concerned, I have a real luxury to step out and do some things that are different, that maybe some other pop artists don't, that are kind of beholden to the one or two things that they do.
I always see myself as a drummer first and not a member of a band. I didn't really listen to alternative music when I joined the Pumpkins. I listened to a lot of jazz. There was an attraction in the writing of the music, in that Billy and I had a real camaraderie in our quest to become better drummers and better guitar players that fit into that music. I always felt like for me moving forward as a drummer, there's so many different kinds of music that I want to play and really just need to make time for. The Pumpkins is just such a full-time job that there's nothing else to do when you're in that organization because A) Billy is writing 15 songs every week and it gets to be a full-time job just remembering arrangements, and B) there's a level of expectation that goes with that.
TS: What was your inspiration in writing the Skysaw album?
JC: It's just asking yourself, "What does my life sound like now?" If I don't want to be in this situation, and I want to create something new what does that new situation sound like? And I think once you go down into your studio and pick up a guitar, you start to figure out, "Okay, this is what it sounds like. Now I can expand on this and kind of take it to the next level."
I found myself with a bunch of songs and needed and outlet with which to purge myself of those songs, and that was really Skysaw. I go through cycles. When I write a bunch of pop songs I have to find somewhere to jettison them so that I can move onto the next thing. The same thing with the Complex. I found myself being drawn to a lot of early 70s prog/jazz fusion, and in writing that stuff it was necessary to find a vehicle in which to jettison that stuff.
TS: What do you want people to take away from the new album?
JC: Whatever they see fit. I'm not here to tell people what it is, I'm just here to play an instrument and say, "it is what it is." You can figure how it relates to your life or if it doesn't. Hopefully they can take some beauty and some sensitivity and sophistication away. That would be my hope that they see it for the art form that is is and treat it with respect.
I don't think it's the artist's job to tell what the art is about. I think it's up to the observer. When I go to the Art Institute here in Chicago I am thankful that there isn't an artist standing by every painting going, "This is about my dark journey to the tavern one night." Something that has no bearing on how I feel. I just hope that people take away a feeling, whether it's the feeling that I got, that doesn't concern me.
People are always really concerned with what things are about. The problem in that lies that, once you learn a magic trick, do you really want to see that magic trick again? And that's kind of the same thing with music. If you have an experience listening to a song, and you carry that experience through your life, and every time you hear that song, you're able to relive that experience and then you find out later that the song is about a broken garbage disposal or something, and it ruins the experience for you, then the art hasn't done it's job.
TS: You've seen a lot of different aspects of the cycles of fame and the music industry through your career. What drives you to keep performing?
JC: Oh man, just my love of playing. I get up every morning and go into my studio and practice. I really just have a love of learning the instrument, and have developed a respect. It's very sacred to me. It's really all of those things that keep me going. It's wanting to pass it on to young people.
It's just basically play my drums. That's what I do and that's what I love to do. It's all I've ever done, and I don't ever see myself doing anything different. It really permeates everything. At this point, there's really no delineation between me the musician and me the person. It permeates deep enough that I feel the more committed I am to my craft, the more committed I can be to my family, and to my kids and everything around me. I just get a feeling of satisfaction from it that I don't get anywhere else.
Visit Skysaw @ www.skysawmusic.com/
Ex-Pumpkin Plots New Course With Skysaw
