Gin Blossoms
The Gin Blossoms’ early good fortune was overshadowed by tragedy. Just as the Tempe, Arizona alternative band’s major-label debut was beginning to chart with their breakout 1993 singles “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You,” the ex-guitarist who wrote those songs, Doug Hopkins, committed suicide. The band’s success became so intertwined with Hopkins’ death that they titled their 1996 album Congratulations I’m Sorry after the strange mix of simultaneous congratulations and condolences that well-wishers directed their way. The band broke up the following year.
Since reuniting in the early ’00s, the band has put behind them the friction and drama of their early years. They’ve toured aggressively, becoming mainstays of summer festivals around the country, yet they’ve recorded only infrequently. In June they released their first album in eight years, Mixed Reality, which they recorded with producers Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, the same team behind R.E.M.’s first LPs, Murmur and Reckoning. Ahead of the Gin Blossoms’ return appearance at Summerfest on Saturday, July 7, singer Robin Wilson chatted with the Shepherd about working with those jangle-pop legends, his new side gig fronting The Smithereens, and why the Gin Blossoms beat the hell out of Deep Blue Something.
How did you end up recording with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter for this record?
We met Don when we were on tour two years ago. We were playing in Ohio and he came to one of the shows. Then a few months later we started talking about making a record, and immediately I said we should call Don Dixon and see if we could record with him. And once we had Don on board, he suggested we go to North Carolina and record at Mitch Easter’s studio. So once we knew we were recording with Don and Mitch, all of us were motivated to do it right, to turn in our best performances and bring our best material.
Working with the two of them is in a lot of ways something that we would have wanted to do when we were 20 years old. All the records they were making as we formed the Gin Blossoms helped us become the Gin Blossoms. And I know that I was personally tapped into a younger version of myself while writing the songs. I wanted to make the kind of record we would have made in 1990.
Does being in the Gin Blossoms completely scratch your itch for making music, or are there sounds and ideas you feel like you can’t explore in this band?
There are other things I’m interested in. I’m a big metal guy, and I love punk rock. But the Gin Blossoms come together to sort of do something pretty unique. So for the most part I’m satisfied as a musician being in the Gin Blossoms, but I am doing some other stuff. I’m going to be doing some lead vocals for The Smithereens, so that’s a big thrill. And again, going back to when I was 20 years old, those Smithereens records were among my favorites, and they were produced by Don Dixon. It’s pretty amazing that we went from making a record with Don and then within a year of that I’m doing vocals for The Smithereens. It’s a pretty amazing coincidence, and a sort of full circle validation of the path I’ve been on as a musician.
How did the Smithereens gig come about?
Pat DiNizio passed away last December, and I was invited to participate in a tribute show. Me and the band, we hit it off, and I told them at the end of the gig I’d love to do some more shows with you guys and that I’m available to a limited extend to sing lead with them. And they sort of raised their eyebrows and went, “really?” So we talked it over, and I’ve done three gigs with them now and it looks like next January I’m going to be out with them for pretty much the whole month. So I’m really looking forward to that. It’s a hell of a lot of work learning someone else’s set, that’s for sure. But it’s incredibly rewarding because The Smithereens’ music has informed everything I’ve done since those albums come out.
In a certain ways, I’ve always sung like Pat DiNizio. The cadence of his delivery, the rhythm of it, has always informed my vocals. And the other vocalist I emulate quite a bit as Marshall Crenshaw, and Don Dixon produced Marshall Crenshaw’s record in 1987 called Mary Jean & 9 Others, and I dug that up a few years ago for the first time and I realized right away that’s how I sing. That’s what I’m shooting for; I sing a lot like Marshall Crenshaw. I normally give credit to Tom Petty and Robin Zander and Freddy Mercury for being my main touchstones as a singer, but I realized through this process how much I sing like Pat DiNizio and Marshall Crenshaw and Michael Stipe, so it’s hard to describe the amount of satisfaction and pride that I feel in this record.
Gin Blossoms always seemed to me like a band that each listener could take something entirely different away from. Some seem to connect with the music itself, which is really sweet and goes down really easy, and others seem to connect to the lyrics, which have a little more of a bite to them. What do you notice listeners responding to the most?
I don’t know. I suppose it’s the whole thing, you know? When I’m singing, people are paying attention to me. But when those guys fire up the guitar solos, you see people get more excited. You know, nobody applauds when I start singing the second verse. They applaud when the guitar solo fires up, because that’s a big moment for everyone emotionally.
What’s the secret to keeping those songs fresh on the road after all those years?
Well I suppose the secret is not being a jaded asshole [laughs]. Just being grateful, to have a body of work that people want to listen to and that people respond to and that means something. Being grateful for being in a band that’s part of the big rock ’n’ roll story.
Are there bands that take that for granted?
I’m sure there are. But it’s rare to have the level of connection that we have with our audience and our songs have with people. Even for other bands that have hits, it sometimes feels that people have a deeper connection with our music than they do to some other things. I suppose it just comes down to the quality of the work. Of course people are going to respond more to “Found Out About You” than they are “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” you know?
I think your songs connect on a couple of levels. On a gut level, there’s something about those melodies that just kind of pulls listeners back to wherever they were or whatever age they were when they first heard them, but there’s something about the sentiments in many of them that stick, too. It feels like they’re the kind of songs where some people might not even realize how much they mean to them until 10 or 15 years later.
I suppose so. I suppose that’s possible. I’ve always been a rock ’n’ roller. Music has always been the guiding force in my life, so I feel as intimately connected to R.E.M. now as I did when I was 19, you know? My love of music has never lagged. It’s always been the predominant force in my life.
I think that’s normal for musicians, but I don’t think that’s true for most listeners. It’s fairly well documented that people’s passion for music peaks when they’re in high school or college then usually wanes from there. Not everybody carries it with them so passionately for decades.
That’s even true within my band. Not everyone in my group pursues new music as much as I do. I generally buy more records and listen to more new bands than my band mates. I’m usually the one who goes, “Have you heard the new Johnny Marr record? Have you ever listened to My Chemical Romance?” I still get really passionate about new music. I just bought a bunch of new records yesterday; I was really happy to do that. My younger brother Lance and I have always shared music together, and last week he played me some new stuff, the Johnny Marr record and this metal band called Bull Beat. I had never heard Bull Beat before but right away I was like, “I love this! I am buying these records.”
Do you ever hear your influence in younger bands?
No. I hear about it, but I’ve never heard it myself. Every once in a while I’ll hear someone tell me, ‘Hey these guys kind of do what you do” or whatever. And I certainly I meet other musicians who give us credits for affecting our sound or their path, but it’s not something I notice or encounter that much.
It feels like your style of rootsy jangle pop has the potential to come back in vogue every 15 years or so, sort of the way new generations of bands continually discovered Big Star.
I think you’re right. Those things are cyclical. I hear people say oh there’s no good music. And I say, “Shut up, you old fogie. That’s just not true. Maybe you’re just not hearing it. but it’s out there somewhere.” There’s a lot of new music that I really love. I hear music that still makes me feel like I did when I was 19 listening to new music.
The big difference, of course, is that rock music isn’t as broadly popular today as it was 20 or 30 years ago. I imagine it must have been satisfying for you guys to come up as a band at a time when the music you loved really was popular. Not every band gets to experience that.
Yeah, I suppose you’re right. We were in the right place at the right time. We were among the second generation of alternative bands. Groups like R.E.M. and The Pixies, The Smithereens, they sort of opened those doors and began to change what was being played on the radio. And our records came out right at a time when that’s what was being played on the radio, so in that sense we were really lucky.
|
|
A lot of bands start off with multiple songwriters but eventually one songwriter takes the reins. Was that something that could have happened with Gin Blossoms, or was it always just baked into your DNA that there were going to be multiple songwriters?
Well, in most cases I think one songwriter emerges as the best one, and there’s a sort of contract among the group to let that person dominate the music. A good example is Smash Mouth. Those are friends of ours, and apparently in their early days they were all trying to write songs, but Greg—I think his name is Greg? [Editor’s note: It is]—he emerged as the best songwriter in the group, and I remember their bass player telling me that he eventually just realized he shouldn’t even bother trying to turn in songs, because Greg’s were so much better. But with us, we all turn in solid material, so there was never really a need to lean on one guy.
Was that what kept the group going after Doug’s death, the fact that you had other songwriters in the stable?
Absolutely. We couldn’t have continued if there weren’t other songwriters available. We’ve always had a deep bench, as it were.
I imagine it’s an extra challenge for you as the frontman, being tasked with representing multiple songwriting voices in a way that feels unified. What’s the secret to doing that?
Heartache and compromise. And just knowing that I’m a part of something that’s bigger than myself, and accepting and being comfortable with the fact that it wouldn’t be as good if I were the only voice.
The Gin Blossoms play Summerfest’s Uline Warehouse on Saturday, July 7 at 10 p.m.
Read more of our Summerfest coverage, including picks, previews and reviews, here.
