The band Main Steam Stop Valve (mssv) are releasing their new album, Human Reaction, on September 1st, via Big Ego Records. It’s their second album together, although they’ve also released several EPs and done a fair amount of touring behind their work, since that’s a large part of how they operate. In fact, guitarist Mike Baggetta, drummer Stephen Hodges (Tom Waits, David Lynch), and bassist Mike Watt (The Minutemen) are following a pattern of writing songs just ahead of a tour, introducing them and evolving them while on tour, and going into the studio following the tour to capture them in completed form.
Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the new album.
The genre-less approach of their collaboration has so far been mainly instrumental, but this time around, with the album Human Reaction, some of the tracks introduce vocals and lyrics. For mssv, and particularly for Mike Baggetta, this is a big development and a frontier territory that’s exciting. As a band that thrives on improvisation, this brings in another element, almost like having another band member, to affect the performance outcome. I spoke with Mike Baggetta shortly before the band started their 58 show Aki tour (Japanese for “autumn”) about the ongoing development that is mssv and the exploration of lyrics for Human Reaction.
Hannah Means-Shannon: This is the second album with you, Stephen, and Mike, and I know that your previous album together was derived in part from a series of live shows. Was that the case this time, too?
Mike Baggetta: For the first album that we did, Main Steam Stop Valve, I had written new music for us and Mike Watt brought a new version of a song from The Minutemen. We did a short tour before that to work out the music so that we could then record. That came out, then a tour around that, but on the Haru tour, I wrote a whole new set of music, which was neat. We would do half of them in one set, and half of them in another set, alternating them every night on tour to work out this brand-new music.
After that tour, we went into Big Ego studios and recorded the new songs, and that is this album, Human Reaction. As you can probably surmise, I’ve actually written a whole new set of music now, so that when we do this Aki tour, we will play the new album, Human Reaction, a couple pieces from the Main Steam Stop Valve, and half of these even newer songs each night. We’ll record those right after the tour and release them next year.
HMS: That’s awesome! You’re keeping up a rolling schedule.
MB: It’s such a great opportunity to be able to do this stuff because I don’t live in Southern California like these guys, my wife and I live in Gainesville, Florida. I have an opportunity to go and play with my friends and work out all this music. Why not take that opportunity to bring something new to the table? I feel lucky to be in this situation.
HMS: That’s a very clear-sighted way of planning things out. It’s becoming increasingly common that band members live far apart so planning is becoming more of an issue. I do know a couple of bands who always record their new albums right after a tour because they feel very “on” and in a great place.
MB: Exactly. That’s exactly why we do it, too. Having just played the music for two months, what better time to record?
HMS: Also, as you just described, having used the tour to tinker and change the songs, you’re at a good place to make final decisions for recording.
MB: That’s definitely become clearer to me the more that I’ve been doing it this way with mssv. I can bring something to them, and I can write a drum part and a bass part that I think will sound really good with these specific guys playing it. That’s in my mind when I write these songs. I write little electric demos and send it to them so they can learn the parts, and they practice, then we practice together, and then the way it sounds at the start of the tour are very different from the way the song sounds at the end of the tour. There’s no way you could get to that with only a week or two of practice. It’s a kind of mystical music thing that happens in the midst of learning and trying different stuff. We try something on a gig and it becomes part of the tune.
HMS: My weird question is, are you ever nervous that something might come up in a show that’s a really great idea, and then you’ll forget about it since there was no recording of it?
MG: [Laughs] I think that happens all the time! In fact, I know it happens a lot. It also happens in my day-to-day when I’ll have some idea, and I don’t write it down, or I can’t because I’m driving or something. Then it’s gone. But I have a pretty heavy background as an improvisor so the specifics of that world are that you do something that’s influenced by that moment, and once you do it, it’s gone if it hasn’t been recorded. That’s just the ephemeral nature of the music, in a way. I think there’s something really beautiful about that. I think that’s okay. You don’t have to capture every butterfly that you see and pin it up on the wall. That’s okay.
HMS: It’s the opposite mindset of trying to hold onto everything, which is also a common approach to songwriting.
MB: Yes, I don’t want to be like a hoarder! [Laughs]
HMS: There’s a real polarity here because one approach to songwriting is about documenting everything, collating everything, then sifting through it. It’s a whittling down process rather than a capture and release process. Do you think those are opposites?
MB: There’s that side of things, too. It’s not that I don’t whittle down or edit songs, especially writing lyrics for the new songs. I’ve been doing that and spending a lot of time thinking, “What’s the most that I can do with the least?” That’s a big thing for me. What you’re saying sounds like opposites, but to me it’s the same coin with two sides. It’s the yin and the yang. The concept of love does not exist without the concept of hatred, and I think the opposites influence each other. It’s like the Walt Whitman quote, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” I don’t think everything has to be labelled and specific. I think everyone works in different ways and that’s the way it should be.
HMS: Some people work differently on different albums purely to switch things up and keep them interested, as well.
MB: For sure. The three 7-inches that mssv did during lockdown with guests were recorded with each person in their separate places. That was one way to do something. I think they sound awesome. I don’t regret anything about those albums. They document an era. But then to be able to get together in a room and play and record, that’s another type of document. I think doing things differently is healthy. It comes from being open to trying new things.
HMS: Writing and performing lyrics for some of these songs is a new frontier for mssv. What led to that decision for you?
MB: I love the quality and delivery of words and I love what that can add to a creative set of songs. It can add a dimension of understanding or storytelling, or it can kind of obscure things. A fascination of mine is how that works in conjunction with the music, particularly on these new pieces that we’re going to be doing. It really came down, though, to one of those 7-inches that we did, the Scott Aicher EP, where for a couple of songs I’d written, I thought, “It would be cool if those had lyrics.” So I had written a storyboard with four art panels for that album. I wrote a little screenplay in my head about these characters, and then I wrote the soundtrack to that. That was the music. For two of them, I thought words might be good to start the story and end the story.
I asked Scott Aicher if he would write the words, and I sent him the storyline and what I was thinking. When he sent it back, I realized that he’d used the words that I wrote as the libretto, the lyrics. I asked him about this and he said, “What you wrote was great, and there wasn’t going to be anything better to tell the story. I just fashioned them more rhythmically and stuck them in there!” Then I realized, “That’s writing lyrics.” Mike Watt and I had talked a bunch about how he comes up with lyrics.
I had actually always wanted to sing, but when I was younger, I had a guitar teacher who unknowingly squashed that idea for me. I sang and played something and at an event, and he said, “Sounded good. Maybe no more singing.” [Laughs] Little 15-year-old Mike thought, “Oh.”
HMS: That’s horrible!
MB: Yes, it was a very intimate thing to try to sing in a performance and I was met with something that was not very supportive was a crusher. But anyway, after I realized that the guys were actually supportive of me trying this, I realized it was an opportunity that I might not get again. I tried to do my best, so that’s what happened.
HMS: That’s a big deal to bring lyrics into the kinds of performances that mssv does because you allow so much room for improvisation. Was that a new field of thought for you, too, how to handle lyrics?
MB: Yes, and to me, that’s one of the most interesting things about being able to do words, now. It kind of acts like another instrument for the band. If you’re going to make space for words, what’s going on with the music? How can you change the pacing or the sound of the words to interact with the music? In my guitar playing, I have loops off to the side, and I use them in a band setting and in an improvised setting. I’ve always thought about that as an extra musician in the band. It influences the next thing that the band plays. Then, when you add the words, it’s like a fifth member. It’s like we’re a trio with five members now! [Laughs]
HMS: One of the tracks that doesn’t have lyrics, “Baby Ghost (From The 1900s) is very cinematic, has some traditional elements I can hear, but also an interesting, uneasy feeling. What was the demo origin point for that one?
MB: We can get into some nerd theory on that one. It was written off of a 12-tone row, an element where you use each of the twelve tones in the chromatic scale. Each chord uses a different root from the chromatic scale. I based the chords on that. Then, the elements of the demo were that the drums hit on “one” and the bass hits on “two.” It’s a waltz, so it’s in 3/4 time. That’s an interesting way to get the rhythm section lifting up the song. Without that, I don’t think it would work at all. Where you put the beats can make or break a song.
That one, I didn’t have a melody for it until we went on tour. But playing it the first couple of nights, I started to put the melody together. It has an abandoned carnival-ride, carousel kind of feeling to it. It was definitely aided by Hodges playing the giant metal chain on the snare drum. Which is part of where the title comes from, since Roky Erickson’s song “Bloody Hammer” talks about “Baby ghost dragging her chain away.” The mix of the song is like 20th century Classical composition theory based on a carnival rhythm, together with a melody, and free Jazz improvisation happening in the middle. It’s a good little microcosm of the way that we approach music.
HMS: That’s an excellent breakdown. It really shows everything that’s going on with you.
MB: And it works, so it’s fun!
HMS: The title track, “Human Reaction” is a very intense piece with big energy to it. There’s just as much energy in the instrumentation as in the vocals. Was that one that built up over time, too?
MB: On the last tour, a lot of what developed for the band, and on many of the songs was the dynamics. To have the loud parts be loud and the quiet parts be quiet, and see how loud we could play the loud parts, and how quiet we could play the quiet parts, and how fast we could change from loud to quiet. That was a really huge thing on the last tour and has worked its way into the new songs. For that song, particularly, that happened. It’s funny because people shoot concert videos, and there are some up on Youtube. If you watch a video from the early part of the tour of that song, and there are almost no dynamics. If you watch a video from the later part of the tour, there are all these dynamics. That’s a span of seven weeks and you can see it in action.
HMS: That’s pretty fascinating. I have to ask about the lyrics, too, on that song. I find songs interesting when they pose questions rather than trying to resolve things and there are some interesting contradictions here. In fact, that seems to be the point, like the line “Who’d want to buy the best version of me?” Society tends to aspire to an idea of improving ourselves, but this undercuts that idea, right?
MB: Yes, I think that’s right on the money. The title of the song is “Human Reaction” and it’s about being human. The contradiction is part of the human experience and to deny that as a reality is a little bit naïve. I haven’t done many interviews where people ask about my lyrics! But I think it’s true, the story of the words in the song is not really anything heavy, but maybe I’m trying to be a better person, maybe someone’s trying to tell me what to do, maybe I don’t really know what to do, and the chorus is the refrain.
It’s just a human reaction to feel that way. Then, at the end, it’s a question, “Is this a human reaction?” Did I learn something the right way? That Walt Whitman quote about contradiction is something to keep coming back to, and even Bob Dylan put that quote in one of his new songs [“I Contain Multitudes”]. It’s okay, I contain multitudes.
