An Interview with Bassist Bob Spires of The Possibilities

I first saw the Possibilities when they were touring with the Dashboard Saviors back in 1995. They played a short but incredibly memorable show at Minneapolis’s Uptown Bar that I will never forget. In fact, I spent the next three or four years on the lookout for them, before they finally released their eponymous debut on Backburner Records in 1999. Well, it’s been almost three years, but they’re back, with their second full-length, Way Out, due on Parasol Records in June. I had the chance to sit and talk with bassist Bob Spires recently.

LC: Tell us a little about what it's like playing in the "Athens scene". Have things been cannibalized to an extent by REM's success?

BS: The Athens music scene is great. There are tons of great bands that have come and gone like Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Harvey Milk, The Twigs, Vaudeville, Redneck Grease Deluxe, Space Cookie, Drip; I could go on. And there are some really cool bands around now, The Rock A Teens, Hayride, The Star Room Boys, The Sunshine Fix, The Japancakes, Jucifer, The Tom Collins, David Barbe, The Glands, Ceiling Fan and The Drive By Truckers. I think REM's success, as far as its impact on current Athens music is concerned, has just attracted tons of creative people. REM is always reveled for their integrity, and that probably appeals to musicians trying to play music in an environment that is interested more in the music and less in the glitz.

LC: Are clubs supportive? Are the fans responsive?

BS: Yes, very much so. We are kind of a different kind of pop band. We're very loud, and try to rock out our pop songs as much as possible live. We get a very lively crowd in Athens at our shows. Our audiences are a large percentage, musicians, most of them are our buddies.

LC: What about the Elephant 6 bands?

BS: The whole E6 thing incubated here in town and I think that shows how well pop goes over here. I enjoyed Olivia Tremor Control, I like Apples in Stereo, Elf Power is cool, but we really don't want to get lumped in with any sort of genre. We were on one of Kindercore's first compilations with a bunch of E6 bands. We did a showcase show to promote the CD with all of those bands, we tried to hook up a Marshall stack and a Fender bassman together for guitar (when we were a 3-piece), and blew both of them up at the show on our 1st song. That was our 1st and only show with any E6 bands. We try to play with all sorts of bands, we've played countless shows with The Star Room Boys, the Dashboard Saviors and Hayride.

LC: When I first came across the Possibilities, you were more of an alt-country sounding band (w/pedal steel). Tell us about the transition. Was it driven by necessity or was it more natural?

BS: We started off as a 3 piece pop/punk band and brought in the steel player after a few years. We were big fans of Uncle Tupelo and liked the way they combined instruments like the pedal steel with -not necessarily- straight country songs. But none of us limit ourselves to enjoying just one type of music, we were listening to Uncle Tupelo, Gram Parsons, Ernest Tubb, Junior Brown, Bob Wills, George Jones; and at the same time listening to Polvo, Superchunk, Guided by Voices, The Beatles, The Stones, and so on. While we played with the steel player Corey (who left the band in ‘95 to focus on touring with a country covers band), we were doing all kinds of styles and even made him play bass on songs that the steel didn't fit on. But when you have a steel player who has toured with gospel bands since elementary school (he once told me that he remembered losing a baby tooth at a Revival at some church down in south Georgia) you gotta throw in those standard covers every once in a while. So when he left the band, it just took some time to restructure the way we approached songwriting. No more "Let the steel fill up the rest of the song". That's when we recorded Loser Stew.

LC: Many bands complain about being "tagged" to a certain sound, particularly alt-country bands that have wanted to branch out, like the Old 97s and Wilco. This doesn't seem to be an issue with pop bands. Do you agree? Are you worried that people are going to start expecting a Shoes album?

BS: Categorizing music is just an easy way to promote it. It lets people who like a certain type of music associate with something they've never heard. We're not really thinking about promoting when we write music. I think pop bands get tagged just as much. Music fans know what the E6 sound sounds like, and if Elf Power came out doing heavy metal, they would probably hear a lot of negative feedback.

It goes both ways. While categorizing music can certainly benefit bands by highlighting what they have to offer, it can also be limiting. When people come to expect something from a band there can be a problem. You can only write so many songs in a certain style before you wanna branch out a little. When Guided by Voices cut that record with Ric Ocasek, there was an outcry from the fans. It seems unfair.

I think of pop in a wider context. I think of Rock and Roll as very structured 1 / 4 / 5 offshoot of traditional styles like blues, and country. But Pop can break those structures and incorporate all kinds of music into its form. So I think of pop as non-traditional songs with catchy melodies. We're only a Pop band when we're playing Pop songs. We had a straight punk rock side project called The Head Gaskets, we had a straight Muddy Waters style blues side project called Blind Lamont Jefferson and The Really Old Men (created because I despise Stevie Ray Vaughn style blues, so we started a blues band and all of the member were required to switch to a different instrument that they weren't very good at playing. It was so that we would sound really nasty and raw). I don't see the need or the purpose in fixating over one style, when there are so many great ones out there. I think that the categorizing mentality tends to lead to an Us Versus Them way of looking at things. I mean what's wrong with Jeff Tweedy singing about seeing a Kiss cover band and doing a Gram Parsons song or Bob Pollard branching out of the Brit Rock realm? Plus, I don't think enough people bought our early stuff that care what direction we go in anyway.

LC: It's ironic that it took releasing a pop record to merit a review in "No Depression". Any thoughts?

BS: They gave us a small review for our first CD on Backburner. We're all extremely excited about Way Out, we put a lot of work into it. The No Depression folks are just into good music, and we were just happy to know they liked it and wanted to give us some attention.

LC: You've played with both Scott McCaughey and Jack Logan, amongst others. What were those experiences like?

BS: We've backed up Logan for over 4 years now. We've toured with him and been involved with recording three records with him. He's very talented. We started 4-tracking with Logan around the time Buzz Me In was finished and Liquor Cabinet (his band) was subsequently breaking up. I think Logan enjoyed our laid back approach to writing and playing. We wrote and recorded 5 or 6 songs the first day we 4 tracked. We would save the riffs and progressions that we couldn't write decent melodies to, and Logan would come up with a perfect melody and lyrics by the time we finished laying down the basic tracks. We started doing shows together and then Buzz Me In was put out by Capricorn and we toured behind it. While recording our album Way Out, we also recorded Logan's Monkey Paw that came out on Backburner.
We became long distance friends with Scott McCaughey a few years ago. A friend of ours sent him our stuff, and he called up and wanted more. So we started a little exchange of music via U.S. Mail. He sends us things he's working on or has worked on, and we do the same for him. I was sending him demos for Way Out, a year before we were finished. Scott's opinion is a good educated opinion to have on your side. Now it's becoming a tradition that when REM is in town rehearsing, Scott plays a show or two with us.

LC: Did you find yourselves developing a following because of your association with them?

BS: Not really. When we toured with Logan, our name never got mentioned in the press, or even on a lot of the bills. Most people don't know that The Minus 5 covered our song. If anything, the association has legitimized what we do, but not to the point of creating a following for us. Shit man, Dave Schools from Widespread Panic has talked us up on Live Webchats for Panic Fans. But I never see hippies at our shows. Schools even came to a party that we played at an Indoor Skate Park here to see us, after he played in front of 100,000 people in Downtown Athens at their big free show.

You need to have a sense of humor about it. I respect bands like Widespread Panic for the clout they’ve attained through years of touring and hard work. Playing 300 nights a year for 15 years pays off. I remember back when REM was first getting started; they dropped everything-no mortgages, no day jobs-and just toured relentlessly.

LC: How easy was it to become the "backing band" for Logan and others?

BS: When The Possibilities first formed, our practice space was a house 20 miles out in the country with no neighbors, we would play several days a week, and all weekend sometimes (probably explains the ringing in my ears), and we'd just bring CDs, records, and tapes out there and learn the whole albums. We'd do The Ramones first few albums, The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Zeppelin, Big Star, anything we could get our hands on. Looking back, I think that really helped us as musicians. We've been a band for 10 years, and now we just click really easily. With Logan, we learned like 40 songs in a couple of rehearsals. With Patterson (Hood, of the Drive-By Truckers), we learned all of his songs in one rehearsal. Scott (McCaughey) just sends us tapes of songs he wants to do and we might get to practice with him once while he's in town before doing a show. It just comes naturally to us. Matt and I ( the rhythm section) pay close attention to each other. The rest is icing.

LC: It's been quite awhile since the release of your eponymous debut. Also, a few years passed between your mini-tour in '95 and your follow-up tour with Logan. Of course, your fans may assume you guys were just sitting around with your thumbs up the arse, but I know you did some local releases, and of course tons of shows. Could you tell us about that?

BS: Well we put out 3 independent releases with the steel player, (Shoe, Shoe 2, and Scattered Smothered Covered and Chunked). Those would have culminated in the Twin Tone record that fell through. Then as a 3-Piece we but out 2 more independent releases (Loser Stew, and Foot In Mouth), that would have gone to make the Meltdown Records (a small label from Los Angeles that is no longer around) thing that we turned down. All of those releases were cassette only. Then we backed up Todd McBride on his European release Sketchy. Then we did the Logan thing. The whole time we did the Logan band, we were recording new songs on 4-track 8-track, 24-track, we have more unreleased songs than you could shake a stick at. We had a lot of songs on compilations. Kindercore's Treble Revolution 2, Ghostmeat’s 23 Bands, Houston Party Records/Factory Magazine compilation in Spain, Contact Records compilation in Japan. We've done a shitload of recording, but either we've wiped our ass (literally) with the record contracts we've been offered in the past, or nobody's been interested in putting out the stuff.

LC: Your house parties back in the 90s were of some renown. Art adorning the walls, bands playing all night. What was that like?

BS: Kevin, Matt and I used to live together, and we very regularly had parties there. We had stacks of paper around and we made people draw stuff and we'd put ‘em up on the walls all over the house. We would have keg parties with 4 or 5 bands playing in our living room. The parties usually got out of control, but they were fun. The Drive-By Truckers played at one, Vaudeville at another, several cool bands. Usually after our shows we'd just invite the whole club back to the house for a party. That was 6 or 7 years ago. About 4 or 5 years ago we started sharing a practice space with several of our friends’ bands, and started doing parties there. We had The Rock A Teens at one, The Gerbils; The Possibilities usually did a set, and one with Logan. The parties were purely for the fun of it.

LC: How has it been working with Parasol? What do you think of their roster?

BS: Parasol is an extremely supportive label. They leave complete creative control up to the artist, and that has really allowed us to offer them something we're really proud and excited about. Matt and I played on the Jack Logan/Bob Kimball album Little Private Angel on Parasol a few years ago. We were impressed with the way they handled that album. Parasol has some cool acts, they've put out so much that I'm not familiar with everything they're involved in.

LC: What contemporary artists do you enjoy listening to?

BS: I'm really into Wilco's new one (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), The Strokes album is well worth the attention it's getting. Guided By Voices kick ass. The Band's brown self-titled album is usually on rotation in my stereo. The Glands 2nd album is great. I love Polvo, I think Exploded Drawing is their apex record. The other guys (Kevin, Matt, Jason, and Chris) are much bigger audiophiles than I am. But they keep me in Dylan and Beatles Bootlegs and we all try to expose each other to new things. Jason turned me onto The Move. I turned Kevin onto The Real Kids. Jack Logan turned me onto Nick Lowe's Jesus of Cool.

LC: Tell us about the 3 bands that matter most to you, and give us a reason why!

BS: The Beatles is an easy one. They had so many great songs. Every album is something you can go back to at different points in your life and find something new to appreciate. The Ringo / Paul rhythm section was so right on all the time. There are so many great aspects to The Beatles. Plus, they have the story to go along with it. They got so lucky, with the timing of them breaking into the mainstream. They had that wry, sarcastic sense of humor, just the total package. I can usually relate more to a group if they have a more working class background, too. I have a hard time believing that The Backstreet Boys really know what it's like to be down in the dumps as they get on their private 747.

The Stones are another easy choice. I keep going back to their albums again and again, especially 12/5 and Out of our Heads. “Mercy, Mercy” and “Hitchhike” are two of my favorite Stones renditions. Of course, Exile is great, I think I've listened to Let It Bleed more often though. Some bands have a bunch of OK stuff and a couple of songs that they were just right on, they were in a zone, and you can pick up on it every time you listen to it. The Stones had way more of those Right On songs than they were supposed to have; “Satisfaction”, “Gimme Shelter”, “Rocks Off”, “Tumbling Dice”, “Street Fighting Man”, and on and on.

I could fit about a thousand more bands in. The Who is probably another easy choice, why not. The Who, another one of those bands that put out a great album every 6 months for years. People don't do that anymore. Record labels want to squeeze the last drop out of albums now a days. We'd like to be that kind of band. Things don't work that way anymore, it's a shame. If it were up to me, we'd put out 2 records a year and charge half the price.

LC: In today's climate, releasing records on your own and succeeding without the concomitant ass-smooching seems to be a reality. Bands like the Rosenbergs and even a singer-songwriter like Mason Jennings have had success this way. Would you agree?

BS: I do believe that you can have a career in music and still do it your own way, but there are certain cold hard facts that you have to face in order to make it happen. #1 you have to give up all traces of a normal life and trade it in on life in a van with a bunch of guys. #2 you have to realize that the music business is saturated with slimy people, not just the ones at the top. I've actually come to the conclusion that some of the major label folks are better than the ones trying to climb the ladder. The people who put out Britney Spears don't claim to be doing anything other than business. That stuff is just a puppet show, it's not the 1st and it's not the last. But the people who claim to have integrity but don't, those are the ones I'm wary of.

LC: What's your favorite REM album?

BS: Hands down, Murmur.

LC: I first saw you open for the Dashboard Saviors at the Uptown in Mpls back in '95. What is Todd McBride doing these days?

BS: We recorded the album Sketchy for release in Europe 4 or 5 years ago, and it was recorded at Doug Stanley from the Glands, studio. I'm not really sure what he's up to now, musically. He plays solo around Athens occasionally.

LC: Any plans for a tour? What cities would be your favorites to play? Any clubs in particular?

BS: Yes, we're gonna tour in July. We will probably do some dates with The Drive-By Truckers up the East coast. Then make our way to Minneapolis. There has been some talk about touring with the Minus 5. Minneapolis has always been receptive to us, ever since Peter Jesperson played us on his radio show years ago, and talked us up. Chicago is great also. We've got 3 GA boys and 2 New Yorkers in the band now, so New York is a must.

LC: How did you come to be with Parasol?

BS: The Jack Logan/Bob Kimball connection Bob played in Weird Summer, which was one of Parasol’s big acts, and he is from Champaign.

LC: I understand your band writes very collaboratively. Could you tell us about how that plays out?

BS: We write in all kinds of ways. Early on, Kevin and I wrote very collaboratively, but he sang most of the songs. In ‘94, I was in a car accident, and I had a lot of time on my hands, so I started writing a bunch, and Kevin and I started trading back and forth on lead vocals. After the steel player quit we started writing more songs that incorporated harmony lead vocals. We collaborated on writing and arranging harmonies. The more time went on the more Kevin and I wrote separately. One of us would bring a song to the table and the other two would either add harmonies or try adding new parts to the song. Kevin and I both have a very strong idea about how we want the song to sound by the time we decide it's good enough to be played by the band. Kevin and I both write all the time. I tend to write a lot of songs and then edit out the ones I think aren't as good. I think that's the best way to learn to write, to do it as much as possible. You learn what to do and what not to do with every new song. We both 4 track a lot and try different things.

After Jason and Chris joined a few years ago, we quickly realized that we had a gem of a songwriter in Jason. So we encouraged him to bring stuff to the table. During the Way Out sessions, we recorded his song “It Ain't You Babe”, which has ended up on the 7" record that just came out on Feed and Seed/Parasol Records. We've been working on songs for the next album and Jason will definitely be a prominent part of that. I think that incorporating different perspectives gives you a more interesting finished product. On our 1st record we had several songs that had 2 part harmony all the way through. On Way Out we tried to blow that out of the water. There are songs that have five-part harmony, like “Everywhere I Look”, and “Now and Then You Appear”. “Invisible” has three-part harmony, and a song on the Out Takes (a collection of songs that didn’t make Way Out) has everybody singing lead vocals (“Dickless Child”). It makes it more of a group effort when everyone has to step up to the mike at least a couple of times during the show.

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