 Credit: Peter Carlson
After fronting acclaimed synth-pop group The Kingdom, Chuck Westmoreland stepped away from music for personal reasons and never planned to return. He became the proud owner of a bar called Red Fox, yet after years of regulars shuffling in and out of its doors, he felt a calling to write music again, this time in a country-leaning style channeling the lives and struggles of all the people he had come to know in his bar.
Released June 1, Long Winter Rodeo is a collection of country-tinged character sketches displaying a songwriting prowess that recalls the introspective storytelling of Taylor Goldsmith and the brutal honesty of John Moreland coupled with the ebb and flow of sparse acoustic instrumentation and driven electric guitars. Here, Westmoreland answers his Essential 8 and talks about the project, songwriting, drinking at gigs, and more. Why did you choose to anchor the album with the songs you did? The songs I wrote on this record change feeling pretty drastically. It can go from power pop sort of stuff to really soft, folky, country between one song and the next. I didn’t really have a song order in mind until after it was mixed and I was about to send it out for mastering. I tried to keep it balanced with a louder song followed by a quieter one. I always thought about it as a vinyl record that you’d have to flip over and starting side A with “Sharp Rocks” made the most sense to me as a beginning. It seemed right to have “Long Winter Rodeo”, the title track, in the middle of the record and also the beginning of side B. “Slaughtered” kind of had to be the last song since it’s so sparse. Where do you draw inspiration from when writing? From different places. Sometimes I write out of fear. I’ll get some terrible thought in my head and turning it into a song helps me to not be afraid of it. Other times I just sing jibberish over a melody and record it. Then I listen to it back and pull the words out of it and eventually start to piece together what the songs about. Some of the songs on this record started with a location, a place that I’d been recently, and I wrote about what I thought happened in that place before I was there. When/where do you do your best writing? It used to be first thing in the morning. I’d get up and start smoking cigarettes and drinking diet coke like I was the John Daly of songwriting and go until I ran out of steam. That’s not really happening anymore. I’ve got a 2 year old and have to get it in when I can. If I get an idea for words or a melody I sing it into my phone so I don’t lose track of it. I write a lot when my daughter is napping but she ain’t napping like she used to.
Who would you love to collaborate with?
Run the Jewels. I got really excited when El-P produced R.A.P. Music for Killer Mike and even more excited when RTJ 1 came out. I love how their story is all about being best friends. What’s the best advice you have ever gotten from another musician? It’s not necessarily advice but whenever I’m having a hard time with something or I feel like I’m not pushing myself enough I always think about Mike Watt. If I’ve got a broken arm and am thinking “shit, I can’t play the guitar like this.” I ask myself what would Watt do? I got to play with him once and tried to run him down about his work ethic but he was just super humble. At my old restaurant we had a table that was only accessible outside by van that we called the Mike Watt table. What’s your favorite venue and why? The Fixin' To in St. John's here in Portland. It’s owned by a couple of great friends of mine and built by another two of my closest friends. It doesn’t get much better than that. Every nail, board, square foot of cement, paint on the walls, drink in your hand, put there by someone you love. Is drinking at gigs a positive or a negative? I can honestly say that, for me, drinking at a gig has never made for a better show. I mean, I usually do it anyway, but it can get outta hand when taken too far. A few years back I spent the afternoon before a show wandering around downtown drinking whiskey by myself and by the time I got on stage I was out of my mind. I took off my clothes, started throwing microphone stands around, and didn’t sing on an entire song cause I was down in the crowd making out with my girlfriend (now my wife) and a microphone at the same time. I guess that could be a positive? If you want to see a grown man, naked, wrapping himself in a microphone cord, losing his shit on stage, then you’d be pretty jazzed but…there’s potential for the music to suffer. Do you have a favorite thing to do on a day off? I really enjoy fishing and spending time with my family. Website/Facebook/Twitter
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