KEENE, NH – Since 2008, The Thing In The Spring has been one of the premier live music events in New Hampshire with its beginnings at The Glass Museum, which used to be in Peterborough, and now its current location at Nova Arts in Keene. There’s been a variety of different performers at the festival including Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, experimental guitarist Marc Ribot, punk rockers Rough Francis, psychedelic dance punks Guerilla Toss, and singer-songwriter Mal Devisa just to name a few. This year’s edition has another stacked lineup happening from May 16 – 18 with Josh Johnson, Speedy Ortiz, Undertow Brass Band, Minibeast, Califone and Stephen Malkmus from Pavement among others taking part, with the latter performing at the nearby Colonial Theatre to close out the second day. Another act who will be performing on the second day are the noise punks Kal Marks, who started out in Boston. They’re going to be taking the stage at Nova Arts at 5 p.m., and it’s bound to be an amplified experience.
I had a talk with vocalist and guitarist Carl Shane from the band ahead of the extravaganza about Kal Marks’ most recent release, being from New Hampshire, and how the near future is a bit up in the air.
- Website: The Thing In The Spring — NOVA ARTS
- Address: 48 Emerald St, Keene, NH 03431
- Tickets: Get Your Tickets! — NOVA ARTS
Rob Duguay: This past September, Kal Marks released their latest album “Wasteland Baby” and much like the previous full-length “My Name Is Hell,” you all worked with producer Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. What made you want to get back to working with Seth and what was the experience like going there this time around?
Carl Shane: It was way better this time around just because we knew each other a lot better. Between “My Name Is Hell” and this record, a couple of us are in another band called Malda, and we’ve hung out with Seth since so we know each other way better. I feel like Seth was more involved, he’ll still say that he’s an engineer and not a producer, but he does producer-like things and there was more of him lending his ideas instead of just recording us. We all did have a really fun time, but it was a lot of hard work and it was nerve-wracking how hard it was until we finished writing the songs. Then when we went into the studio, it was just a breeze and it was just so much fun.
RD: Was this something different you guys did versus previous releases where you crafted the songs out ahead of time before going into the studio?
CS: Overall from outside it probably looks the same, but there’s a lot of different little minor things, it’s hard to explain. I was very, very dedicated to the writing of this album, and I know you’re supposed to say that you worked hard on every album, but it was another level of involvement. It was maybe too obsessive, but if we make another record, I think we’ll take it a little slower and space it out. Around the clock, I was thinking about it, working on it, writing the lyrics and taking down notes from watching a lot of movies and about the storytelling from those movies or from books or from poetry. It was constant research to try to craft an album that felt more like a movie or like a book.
We were trying to make it feel like a story, or at least I was, and that’s the only thing that hasn’t changed. As collaborative as our process is, the lyrics are still all from me. We don’t live in the same place, half the band is in New York and the other half is in Rhode Island, so there were a lot of trading ideas back and forth while recording at home. I was just crazy fruitful at the time, but it was also really hard to focus and finish stuff. Coming up with three quarters of a song came really easily and really quickly, but it was agonizing when it came to how to finish it. Two months before going into the studio, it hit rocket lightspeed and it kind of felt like when you finish a puzzle.
When you’re getting towards the end, you immediately know where the rest of the pieces go and it starts to move really quick. Also, I’ve never been much of a cannabis user, but I was during the making of this record and it made me go into those obsessive moments where I couldn’t turn the writing machine off.
RD: That’s a cool analogy you have with the puzzle and how it relates to putting the finishing touches on a song. I find your vocal delivery to be very unique with how you can croon at one moment, but then you’re screaming, yelling and increasing the intensity of a song at another. What would you say has influenced this approach to singing where you’re going through two different ends of a spectrum?
CS: I’ve always really liked singers like Al Green, James Brown, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. Those are really, really good singers, they’re crazy good singers, and I love how they could go really high and then go into this crackling, kind of aggressive sound. I think soul singers are kind of the original punk rockers, like Sly and the Family Stone, that’s another one who has had a huge influence on me since I was a little kid. Over the years, I’ve only grown more and more obsessed about them, they’re definitely one of my favorite bands ever. I’ll put them up against any hard rock band and say that they rock more than the Ramones, and I love the Ramones.
I’ll also say singers like Frank Black from the Pixies and Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill and Le Tigre have a way of singing where a blood-curdling screech or yell will come out of nowhere. It’s like when somebody says something so spot on that you feel like is in the back of your subconscious and you wish you had that thought, or you feel like you did but you couldn’t put it together. When I hear singers like that, it makes me want to do something like what they’re doing, but with me, it’s kind of f***ed up. Those singers I mentioned are all really good, and I’m never going to be that good, but I can mutate it in a messed up way like Captain Beefheart or Tom Waits. I also feel like I love a lot of weird singers like Björk where it’s crackly, but they have a real breadth where they can project while also being kind of out of tune and stuff like that.
RD: Yeah, that’s cool that you have such a wide range of influences. What are your thoughts on performing at The Thing In The Spring? I think you’re from New Hampshire, so do you consider this to be somewhat of a homecoming?
CS: Not really. I’m excited to play there, for sure, but New Hampshire to me is just where my parents and my sister live now. I wish it felt different and sometimes you see these movies where the hometown hero comes back or something like that and everybody at the bar is like,”Hey, Joey!”, but that’s definitely not what I’ve experienced and I’m totally fine with it. I haven’t stayed in touch with my New Hampshire roots and I haven’t lived there for a long, long, long time, but every so often we play in New Hampshire and it’s great, it’s pretty nice. I moved away when I was 19 and I’m 37 now, and since moving, I have met and become friends with other New Hampshire people that I didn’t grow up with who are some of the best people I know and I’m sure a lot of them are going to be at The Thing In The Spring. We’ve played it once before in 2015 and it was really awesome.
David Pajo from Slint played along with a bunch of other bands and he was incredible. Overall, I’m really excited to play and see some old friends. Keene is also not super close to where I grew up, I grew up in the Nashua area, but it’s not super far.
RD: It’s fairly close and Nova Arts is a really cool venue with a lot going on. There’s a coffee shop and bar along with a little record store and art gallery, it’s a unique spot.
CS: One thing I’ll add is the guy who runs the festival, Eric Gagne, I used to go see his band when I was a little kid. He had a band called Death to Tyrants that was kind of like post-rock, post-hardcore and instrumental, and I thought they were amazing. I just stumbled into a show in Amherst, New Hampshire, which is a town nobody plays in, and I got to see them. Afterwards, I talked to Eric briefly and he just gave me a CD because I didn’t have any money on me, so it does feel like a full circle moment.
RD: That’s a wicked cool story. After The Thing In The Spring, what are Kal Marks’ plans for the coming months? Is there just going to be a lot of touring this year or are there any preparations for a new album?
CS: We’re going to be doing a six show run with the band Young Widows from Louisville, Kentucky. They’re great and I’m excited for that, and then that’s it for us, actually. We won’t be playing after this, but it’s nothing bad, it’s just that our bass player is moving to Germany and me and my wife, who plays guitar in the band, are having our first child in September. I would love for Kal Marks to continue, and I think we’re gonna try, but we’re definitely going to be taking a big long break. Touring has been pretty hard, it’s been great and it’s hard, and when we did the “My Name Is Hell” record, we did a lot of touring.
We did the full U.S. and then we did a run of shows in Europe, so we did a lot and we got pretty burnt out. When “Wasteland Baby” came out, we purposely chose to not overdo anything, so we did a Midwest tour, a Northeast tour, and then we did the U.K. about a month ago, and it was awesome, but we’re just trying to not burn ourselves out so much because none of us are making money doing this. We’re going to try to go on, but we’ll be taking a bit of a break and we’ll just figure it out as we go. It’s all a big question mark, but we all still like hanging out and we still love making music. I think there’s more of a chance of us making another album than doing a lot of touring.
In fact, I want to make sure that there’s another album. I really, really have that urge in me to make another Kal Marks record with Seth Manchester. I love working with him and I think we all do.