Nick: I could use some background. What’s the history of the project?
Davis: I had taken a break from bands. The first psychedelic band I was in was called Fuzz Beloved. In the ‘90s we toured the U.S. and finally managed to scrape together a full length before we broke up. After that I had my own thing, Ludivine, where I recorded myself, handled everything but the drums, and had a live band, but it didn’t really last. From there I went to film school for a few years and decided to take a break.
Some friends and I were doing a film in the desert, in Death Valley and we went to this abandoned factory near Zabriskie Point to try and record drums in this huge abandoned silo - about 70 feet high. And we did and from those beats I found one that I really liked and experimented with it with a four track machine. That song turned into “Wormwood Raindrops” and actually uses the beat on the recording. It’s wet, a little obscure, and has this big sound. It sort of inspired me to start a new project, Ludivine.
That project was something between Fuzz Beloved and stuff like Cream, Hendrix, and Floyd. Subsequently it was more of a groove thing, similar to the music in black exploitation films, groove oriented and not as heavy. Then I brought the eight-string back into the mix for the heavy sound, but still having a groove bass feel. There’s R&B, funk, and soul in the mix, but also heaviness - that’s how it got started.
I found players in 2003, we got together, and I put down more songs based on beats. That’s not the only way I compose, but it’s one of the ways I approach composition. Other times it’s a melody or a riff, or an idea on the guitar, or the bass, the eight-string. So I started putting some things together and it didn’t take long to get into recording. We had a pretty good range of stuff: heavy stuff based on the eight-string, mellower stuff based on guitar and acoustic stuff, really ambitious. For the live show we just got into the heavier side. To finish answering, the project has been running since then, members have come and gone, but the vision and goals have been the same.
Nick: Other than the description you just gave of the music, what would you say is the vision or goal of the band?
Davis: Well, firstly, the category we’re really embracing is psychedelic rock. It’s problematic because to most people that means something retro from the `60s or the `70s, but that’s accurate to a degree - most of my influences come from music from that time period. We’re not trying to be a revivalist band, not recreate the `60s and early `70s; we’re doing something in which “psychedelic” refers to something more visceral. It’s something more physiological, not just a melody or heavy song; it imitates a drug-like feeling, although it doesn’t necessarily compel someone to take drugs or get stoned, but imitates that sensation. Within that, I think the groove foundation is important, more of a black feel, on top of which is something more melodic than just normal R&B, and other effect and songs, but also that heavy quality, and of course that’s informed by the ‘60s and ‘70s.
I’m trying to do something fresh, which of course takes from the foundations of the past, but am trying to forge ahead in a new, original way. This late day in rock ‘n’ roll it’s difficult to reinvent the wheel. I feel like we’re making headway, based on what other people say. I could trumpet myself all day and just blow hot air, but a lot of voices have said we’re hard to describe and compared us to all kinds of bands, some of which we’ve never heard of or heard before. That’s an affirmation we’re on the right track, that we’re somewhat avant garde. I’m not sure - that’s how I’d describe it.
The other thing is yeah, we have an eclectic range, everything from the heavier side of what could be considered stoner rock to the mellower stuff - psych folk. It’s difficult to market that sound. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. From an artistic point of view is daring but from the marketing, music industry side of it, people don’t know what to expect.
Nick: It seems like you guys get fairly high accolades.
Davis: We do. It’s international and includes everything from ‘zines to forums. I think we’re getting the kind of reception I’d like to see more in Europe. So far that’s presented itself as a far better market for us - the crowd is more sophisticated and ready for something original and exploratory. The American audience is more spoon-fed, let’s the radio tell them what to like, dummied down, a lower common denominator - not to say Europeans don’t love pop too.
Nick: How’s your local reception?
Davis: It’s very, very difficult to build a fan base in L.A. these days. People have moved here from all over the place to pursue something in the entertainment industry. I’m a local and regret not moving. I always wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten the hell out of here, but it’s convenient because of the entertainment industry. It makes it difficult too because it’s skews what’s vital to doing something like music. Around here you get a lot of peripheral areas stuck in the late ‘80s early ‘90s metal sound and also the hipsters with the Silver Lake and Echo Park sound. I don’t really know where we fit in. The indie rock thing, it’s very trendy in Hollywood, but it’s also a very stiff, white thing based on this doot-dut-doot-doot-dut, doot-dut-doot-doot-dut feel that’s got very little groove undercurrent. I don’t think we fit with that. If we went on after that people might respond though. On the other hand, we have a pretty good live show, but it’s also different than what the album suggests. We have a female live member now and she’s a lot more energetic and charismatic. I tend to be subdued, busy playing, but she gets out in front and jumps around and goes into the crowd. I find it refreshing. I’m also getting tired of having to sing all of the time - it’s nice to focus on my instrument and let someone else take care of that. We find a compromise of her elements and the current sound according to the record. Audiences are responding in interesting ways. A lot of people are into it. Musicians say it doesn’t sound like she fits. At this point it’s an experiment; we’ll see where it goes. We’ve got some of the most exciting songs that we play in the set for years in the set now, so it’s going pretty well.
Nick: You write the music, arrange it, play eight string bass, four string bass, keyboards, sing, and produce all of the music on the records. I think I got all of that. How do you approach each stage of the process?
Davis: I’ve already mentioned some of my compositional approaches. I compose over a particular drum beat or come up with an melody that hasn’t been worked out with an instrument, or maybe use an instrumental idea from playing around on the guitar or eight-strong - less often the four string bass; I put that on top of the drums usually using a four track cassette device to get things going. I realize I need some more updated equipment for home use so as to not be so confined, but it’s worked in the past and has actually gotten the body of most songs together. I’m able to add other ideas once the basic song sketch is there. A lot of it is worked out with Ricardo [the drummer]. He’s the most active visionary and creative member of the band, more so than any other. We’ll work out things in rehearsals before the recording phase starts. For the last couple of records - one or two of which haven’t been released - a couple of engineer friends in the business, they gave us a good rates, had all of the mics and ProTools, and so from there we piece-milled it. All of the drums are on 2-inch tap on the current record… we recorded in a couple of different places. Some overdubs were even done in small apartments in Hollywood. It’s not like it used to be, all in one studio, although I guess people bounced tracks from studio to studio back then too, so it’s not so different. There’s more ability to be portable today. We even went back to the factory, the abandoned silo, and tracked something there. Then we got into the mixing phase.
It’s usually just me and an engineer for that stage, although Roberto has been there for some of that if his schedule permits. That’s one thing I’m going to change - I want to get back to handling the mixing myself. With an engineer, it’s their equipment and I’m literally sitting in a chair behind them while the turn the knobs. This means I have to communicate what’s going on in my head to them rather than doing it myself. You can’t have as many happy accidents that way. Putting it into words is different than just turning knobs. I’d rather turn the knobs. That would get things closer to my vision.
Nick: You alluded to several finished records. What else is there besides the self-titled album?
Davis: Well the original debut record was accomplished under our previous moniker. We toured with it overseas and the U.S. twice and garnered a lot of nice press but I didn’t want to carry on under that name. It was too neutral. But it was the same essential project and I feel like that record had many virtues and shares the same vision as this project, so I feel it deserves to be released under the new moniker. I went back and made adjustments to those mixes, various improvements here and there, so it will be a new record, with new artwork, a new title, and new song order. The old one looks like an artifact at this point and it deserves better than that. I’d say it has more of a pop sensibility. The current record is a little darker and moodier, but this one still has some heavier songs as well as some trippier and floatier ones, so I’ll try to release it down the line, probably early next year.
Nick: And there’s another one?
Davis: Yes. We recorded it in tandem with the newer record. It’s more of a mellow thing - there’s no eight-string - and it has more of an acoustic agenda. A lot of the songs have been on the shelf for a while. I showed them to Roberto and he thought there was enough good stuff there. This goes under the dangers of too much eclecticism. We don’t know what’ll happen. It probably won’t get categorized as stoner rock. It’ll answer to that on the subsequent record with heavier stuff. If I do this mellow record, I don’t want people to think I lost my balls, didn’t want to be heavy. We have kind of an ambitious agenda and a wide range of things we like. This next one will probably be released in the early fall, maybe late September. We recorded it with a different engineer, but it was pretty much worked on at the same time as the self-titled album - we just dove right in. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but came to determination to get it out there and see what happens. We probably won’t market it to all of the same people. It’ll probably be embraced just as easily by the larger progressive community. I’ve learned much more recently just how vast it was and that psychedelic music is considered progressive. I thought it meant bands like Yes and Rush. I don’t really want to be like that; I don’t want to be too technical and virtuoso-istic.
Pretty soon you’ll see an array of releases from this band, it’s going to happen in pretty close succession. I’m really just trying to clean the slate and get these older things done, packaged, and presented, and move on, all within the vision. The next thing after that will probably be something heavier and darker.
Nick: So why group the songs by relative genre? Why not mix things up like on the self-titled record?
Davis: I think the current record definitely explores multiple facets of the band, but it’s definitely heavier and darker… I like the concept of an album, of everything being related, even though in a marketing sense it’s less and less viable as people download songs they like from packages of songs online. They don’t really care about the album as a form of presentation. But even the really big groups still release records with 12 songs on them. It’s ambiguous. From my own tastes, I know I’m not really attracted to the idea of presenting single tracks without an overarching title and artwork. I grew up in the vinyl environment, a more ritualistic way to enjoy recorded music. You spill out the record on the floor and look at the cover. All of that was pushed aside with CDs. And now there aren’t even CDs - you have a choice between listening to mp3s out in the world or your record collection at home.
Nick: So will future Heavy Water Experiments releases be available on vinyl?
Davis: That’s a music industry related question. I love vinyl, that warmer sound, but it’s a financial situation. On our own, we’re not quite at the stage we need to be to do that. It’s expensive for an independent band to do that unless they really think there’s a demand for that and they’d make back the money right away. It’s another thing to release a 7” promoting a couple of singles. There was a song that was recorded at the same time as the self-titled album, that’s got a major key feel and didn’t really fit the darker feel of the album. We’ve also got a newer one that would work well with it, but even 7”s are expensive. I don’t know if we’re at that stage yet. If we were in a very good touring network, playing shows pretty consistently and overseas as well, then it would be more feasible. But for now we’ve got CDs. It still remains the primary promotional format, even though people aren’t buying them. Magazines and radio stations still prefer them so we have to continue printing them. It doesn’t represent an ideal - it’s just a matter of fact.
Nick: You play everything on the recordings - sans drums. So why the live band?
Davis: [laughs] Again, that’s an industry related answer. Bands are relying on live shows - from nobodies to major acts - to garner income because there’s been such a crisis in record sales and because spending patterns have changed so drastically. There’s all this opportunity to get your hands on music for free online, more so than ever before, and it’s changed the entire picture for how money is supposed to percolate down. It’s up to musicians to merchandise at shows, selling directly to people who come to shows. And it’s not just the grassroots - even Metallica gets most of their money from t-shirt sales on the road. I think the live act could be considered essential along those lines.
And then there’s the artistic side of things - how much pleasure you get from playing live. It’s fun to play live and feel gratification, but it’s difficult to do that unless you have people coming to shows who are interested in your music. For my band, I think we’re in a grey area. Locally, some people have never heard us, others have. In the meantime, our music is being disseminated online and people can hear it, read about it on a Web ‘zine or in a printed magazine. They may even hear it on a radio station or podcast. There’s a gap there that needs to be bridged between what we do live and what we do on the record. It hasn’t quite happened yet. We tried touring and promotions but are sort of in limbo. There’ll be no more DIY for us. It’s just too expensive on our own. It’s very difficult to make back the money to travel across the U.S. and overseas - we’ve done that twice and rented equipment and hired a van, and there just aren’t enough people at shows on a regular basis. Maybe there’ll be enough momentum for us to do that now, but I have to be honest, I’m a little jaded about even attempting to do it. I’d rather tap into a higher market via a strong label and using their connections. I’m not going to just hire a PR company again - I’m getting leery of those kinds of investments. They don’t really pay off.
Nick: I’m curious about that last bit.
Davis: It’s complicated. It’s not that I regret doing those things. Obviously there are some nice things about those experiences. There’s a lot to be learned from being overseas and it’s a lot of fun to meet people and have a few good shows and have people say eloquent, articulate things. Those kinds of things can make it enjoyable and I don’t regret it so far. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve just had to become more of a businessman. It’d be nice to just be an artist and focus on songwriting, recording, and performing, but you have to make room for these other business aspects as part of the whole independent band thing. I’m not entirely convinced it’s possible to have an indie career without tapping into a higher network of companies and venues that work together. I can’t see throwing that aside and trying to build it on your own.
Think of it in terms of a minimum wage job. To earn a minimum wage income, I’d have to sell a $10 CD every hour from 9 to 5 every day. If you’re touring a lot, that might happen - you may sell 10 CDs at a show with a good turnout, and even then, you made minimum wage income for that day [laughs]. At the local level, without touring constantly, you can’t do it. I’ve dreamed about relocating to Europe - why not move and start up there? But we haven’t got a springboard - we’d still have to have to pay rent, work in a bar illegally and play live shows, and it’d really just be the same problems all over again. When a band approaches venues independently it’s very different than a label saying they have a band or a tour. Venues recognize companies. I hate to paint such a bleak picture, but I just haven’t been seen the indie DIY thing work. You hit a dead end and either jump to a higher level or sit in limbo. You could spend your own money, pay for your own records, and keep going, but it’s going to be tough to make that money back.
Nick: I’ve heard a lot of this. It seems you’re either a big band established under the old system or an independent band trying to figure out how to circumvent it. So you don’t think that’s possible?
Davis: I don’t know. All of this DIY stuff, there’s a lot of hype about it, but it seems like a fantasy to me, created by companies that want to exploit unsigned bands that are desperate to achieve their dreams. I’ve seen it - it’s a rampant new phenomenon. These companies, their profitability is based on unsigned bands that pay a fee on something that doesn’t legally require results. All of the radio, street team, PR, online blogging - maybe these people all go to the same conferences and talk about this. I’ve put money into them and seen what happened. Sometimes they get results, but the thing is, they don’t have to promise them. They say they’ll shop your misc for you, that they have these connections on the inside, but with everyone doing this, so does everyone else, so you’re back to square one. It’s the same thing as sending your cassette package in… maybe I’m just completely ignorant of what can happen. Maybe there are success stories, like someone who puts up a silly song on MySpace every day and gets people excited, a song for every day of the year, and he’s able to generate some hype, but I think those examples are pretty scarce. Bands used to be such that you only could be aware of a few of them on big labels that were marked properly. Now you have thousands and thousands of them trying to get their stuff through this Internet filter and get noticed. They’re like pests: they’re like locusts. And people don’t want to be bothered by them. People only open their ears to a few channels that penetrate all of that static. For a band like mine, it’s a very long road. The only bands that make money exist within that bigger machine. If you looked at a lot of bands on small indies you’d see they weren’t doing nearly as well as you’d expect.
Nick: Indubitably. Now are these views informed by your professional career as well? I recall you have engineering experience or something of the sort.
Davis: Well no. My day job right now is as a university professor, but not full time. I completely disassociate that with the music, but since you asked… even that, in this current climate with California going bankrupt, is not going great.
Nick: Get sick while you still have healthcare!
Davis: [laughs] Exactly. I’ve been in school for a long time - that’s why I ended up this way, just accumulating degrees so I could keep doing music and pursuing musical ambitions. That’s just the road I’ve been going down.
Nick: As far as commercial success goes, I have to say you’ve got more catchy hooks and accessible songs that a lot of bands I’ve heard classified as stoner rock.
Davis: Well thanks. I believe in hooks, whether that makes it pop or not I don’t know. That’s why I had a hard imagining us within a wider progressive rock community. I believe rock has lost it’s vital purpose if it doesn’t keep some simple reference, a simple hook or repetition, that kind of stuff.
Nick: I’ve neglected some housekeeping stuff about the band. I have to ask about the name. Is it a Star Trek reference? A World War II reference?
Davis: Well originally the band was named… well, you’ll notice I skirted that earlier.
Nick: That’s okay; I have it written down in front of me. [laughs]
Davis: I’d like to sort of erase that from history, but I don’t know if that’s possible. [Trekkie’s Log: according to the subsequently discussed Star Trek episode, yes it is possible.] The first idea was to use an exotic female name. I thought that was an avenue that hadn’t been trodden so much. Imogene seemed like an interesting name that hadn’t been used at that point in 2003, but it was around the time we decided to go with it that Imogene Heap came along, so there was already a black cloud over it. It took a lot longer for the name, as an idea, to dissolve. When it did, I thought “what the hell was I thinking?” I was traveling with my father in Iceland at the time and it came to me suddenly, not quite an epiphany, that I was bored with it, tired of it, and that it didn’t do justice to the music.
I guess I was thinking about ideas and hit upon Heavy Water Experiments because I remembered a certain episode of Star Trek [Trekkie’s Log: “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Season 1, Episode 28] in which they use a time portal and it takes them back to the Depression, in the Chicago area or Midwest, and Spock uses a contraption and sees that if Kirk saves this woman, she’ll start a peace movement and give the Germans enough time to complete their heavy water experiments and develop the atom bomb. Of course Kirk is in love with her, and they have to stop him from saving her from getting hit by a car. The flow of those three words really stuck in my mind and I understood the reference. By using the name I’m not trying to reference Nazi Germany - historically many people were experimenting with heavy water when they were trying to invent the atomic bomb. I like it as a generally apocalyptic reference. I also like the word experiment as we’re trying to do something new. I don’t want to fly a flag with a band name for what we’re doing, so I also like that it’s more abstract and loose. I’m a lot happier with it and don’t think I’ll change my mind in another year or two. Another nice thing is that it doesn’t remind me of too many other band names. That could be the most difficult thing about being in a band today.
As the world closes in and artistic expression contracts, it seems bands have a total disregard for naming themselves. There are names that are boring, banal, mundane, and totally convoluted, thing you would never dare name a band before. It’s almost as if bands don’t care. Which I guess is okay, as it should really be about the music, but it’s nice when a band can present itself in multiple dimensions. The classic example is Led Zeppelin. A lot of marketing thought went into that; they weren’t just sitting around getting stoned and talking about Aleister Crowley. Jimmy Page was thinking very hard about it in a marketing sense. It all works - it fits the music, they look right, the artwork looks right. And of course there are The Beatles. But nowadays… well I hate to sound like a mad old man, but these young white kids with plaid t-shirts, short hair and beards - it’s so utterly boring. Try to look a little different. It makes things fun… then again we’ve had anti-rock star periods. It’s kind of a complex thing that depends on the person. Maybe this talking is pretentious, but I just don’t find what they’re doing interesting.
Nick: My last requisite question. You’ve got a female singer for the live band now. How did that happen?
Davis: Rebecca, yes. We were looking for a keyboard player. I had envisioned this as a four piece for drums, four string bass, keyboard, and me on guitar or eight-string, singing. It’s changed in that we were at a point where we needed a new keyboard player and we thought it’s be fun to have this female member for a change. A lot of times it’s hard to find a good keyboard player because someone who’s skilled needles around too much. It turns out Rebecca is a talented vocalist and something of a songwriter herself, so I thought it’d be interesting to give it a try and let her sing a song. We had a cover or two - one of Muddy Waters from his brief psychedelic phase, and a Hendrix one. She sings an octave higher, which people like, and she really puts on a show. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a Pink Floyd type presenter, more about the music than stage antics, but she’s really had that down and I thought it’d be nice to pursue that more.
It was also attracted to being relieved of singing duties. Before this I was singing all of the time and rarely had time to get away from the mic and wander onstage. But once we put her out front, away from the keyboard, we needed someone else to play keyboard again. I should clarify. My eight-string, it’s categorically a bass, but it’s a totally different instrument with all of these higher strings. Its range is somewhere between a bass and guitar. It doesn’t quite have the harmonic range of a guitar, so something else is required to color the higher end voices. With her out in front, we need to bring in another keyboard player. So now we’re a five piece, and sometimes there’s percussion - congas - so we sometimes look like a six piece. I want to draw the line. I don’t want a rock-estra. Right now we’re leaning towards a five piece.
Nick: Does the live band meet for any other purpose than preparing for live shows? You mentioned working out ideas with Roberto. Do the live musicians ever figure into writing?
Davis: I think ideally there would be more of a collaborative medium. I’m not trying to be egomaniacal about this, it’s just that I’m a music listener first and a passionate selector with a particular vision and am subjectively driven. I don’t want anything I think is second rate. If I’m collaborating on this project, I have to scream at certain points. That makes it a problem to keep things together, because people obviously want to contribute - I understand that - but if I don’t think their parts are at least as good as mine, I don’t use them. This has been most acute with bass. That’s my longest instrument and I’m very confident with it. There’s a very strong political dimension to this, where you want people to be happy, and it’s more fun to collaborat - but there’s a tension between that and the vision becoming realized. Aside from drums, I can play what I want to and don’t write virtuoso-istic parts.
Nick: In terms of output, do you have anything else that has yet to see light of day?
Davis: It’s interesting because that’s what I think this mellower record is. Maybe these songs weren’t ideal for Heavy Water Experiments the stoner rock band, but I felt they should be recorded and released and when I worked with Roberto on them, he believed in that. With the current record, there wasn’t a long list of songs from which it was pared down. Actually the first record [Imogene- Imogene] was a lot of reworked Fuzz Beloved ideas. Other songs were from older periods too. After the mellower record, there’s hardly anything left. I’ve been trying to get caught up with myself, trying to release everything I felt was good enough to record. Of course there are sketches I haven’t uses, but there aren’t even many of those left on the shelf. I wanted to catch up in part because I didn’t know if music was going to have to become a hobby as I entered this new career. I’m looking forward to the point where I can be fresh and have something new. I haven’t written much of anything in the last year or more. I’m most excited about the record that hasn’t been recorded yet.
