Interview with Casey Spooner of Fischerspooner

Casey Spooner is one half of the duo Fischerspooner, set to grace the West Coast with their eclectic presence next month. I had the chance to talk with Mr. Spooner over the phone to discuss the tour, Coachella, and Ronnie James Dio.

You’re playing the House of Blues in Anaheim, have you played here before?

Yea, I think this might be our fourth time.

You’re doing five shows in six nights which seems kind of busy.

Oh no, that’s not a bad schedule at all. When we toured last year we were on the road for three months and sometimes we would do six days on and one day off or seven shows and one day off. So just to do, like, five shows back to back is not so bad.

Do you like it that way?

I love it that way! I love the endurance of it. It’s more like sport.

How did “Fischer” end up coming before “Spooner?” Just alphabetical?

Uh…I don’t know, I can’t remember. I think it just sounded better. My face is everywhere so I guess I get face first and he gets name first.

You guys do some awesome music videos and what do you think is the benefit of doing a music video in this day and age? MTV doesn’t really play them anymore, but the internet lets you do any kind of video you want.

Everybody watches everything online now, so, in a way, music videos have a less commercial vibe and are more grassroots. The contradiction is that there is nobody to pay for them. The big challenge now is how do you pull one off when you’re paying for it yourself?

At least you have a little more freedom then, right?

Nobody ever told us what to do, so we’ve always been pretty free, but, exactly, the only limits are logistical.

Does the constant made-up labeling for your band bug you at all? Everyone seems to kind of have a new spin on the word “Electronic” or electro-clash or something…

You know, I love it, I mean…please talk about me! The more you call me anything the better it is! We started working in the summer of ’98 and spent a lot of time together, and through that fall we started recording and it was through that summer and that fall that we defined everything we were gonna do and have done. So, we worked through several years putting everything together. Then around 2001 we played this festival called “Electro Clash” and we had already recorded the entire album and we had made music videos and made the performances; basically everything was finished. Then that word sort of got kicked around after playing that festival, but for us we had already defined what we did long before there was any kind of a name for it. There was never any confusion for us about what we were doing. We just keep working and people keep trying to find a way to define us. That’s great, you know, good luck! I don’t know what I do! I just make it; it’s your job to figure it out.

Speaking of making it, have you two every talked about switching roles with you programming and he singing?

God no, he (Warren Fischer, programmer) is not a performer, at all. Never has been, never will be so it’s a match made in heaven.

I noticed you pretty much do all the interviews so does he not enjoy the spotlight or what?

(pause) Um…he’s just lazy.

(laughs)

Fair enough.

He’s a real diva, that’s the funny thing. I’m like the approachable, down to earth, easy to work with, hands-on, get my hands dirty…he’s the more “Don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t bother me, I’m not available.”

You have a fairly unique brand of music so what type of influences do you have? Specifically, and this might be weird, but Ronnie James Dio died the other day and did you listen to him growing up?

Who?

Ronnie James Dio from Black Sabbath.

Oh wow…Warren is more like a rock dude. He grew up playing classical violin and his mother was an opera singer. He was in indie rock bands and a math rock band called Table. Very kind of intellectual Chicago rock and he comes from more of a rock background. That sort of defines one direction whereas I was a painter and worked in experimental theatre and video art and have a performance background. Our influences aren’t just musical, it’s sort of a combination of image and performance and sound. It’s not that segregated, as it’s not that clear cut when we work together. He’s worked in film and has that visual sense and I grew up around a lot of great musicians and I have an ear, too. To define it is not so easy.

You’re definitely not just the sum of your parts. Have you seen the “Emerge” performance from the Coachella DVD?

Oh yea.

What did you think about that?

Oh I love it, it was a great moment. It was a big turning point for us because, you know, the spring of 2003 and at that point we had released in Europe mostly. A lot of people thought that we were German and we played mostly in nightclubs, around DJ’s and dance music but we weren’t playing around other live bands. We avoided that at all costs, playing with a live band, because everything we were doing was pre-recorded, you know? So, you know, it may not stand up next to people that were executing the music live.

Finally, we got the offer to play Coachella, which was a great offer, and we were like “Ok, are we gonna do this?” We were on tour but we never had a band open for us and that show was kind of a crazy turning point. We said “Ok, f*ck it, either this is going to work or not work and it’s going to be the beginning of something or it’s going to be the end.” We did that performance and it was incredible, and it didn’t matter whether the music was being executed live, what mattered was making a compelling performance. And it totally connected in this audience of people that were there seeing, you know, Interpol and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Have you ever been offered to play there again and would like you like to play Coachella again?

No, you know, I would love to go back, but they are very strict about, it seems, about when you can return.

Really?

I don’t know what the rule is, but you can’t go back frequently. I’m ready, though!

What’s the band’s philosophy or your personal take on music sharing and downloading?

It’s tough, you know, because we were basically built through file sharing. We had a ton of press and we were very successful in New York but we had no real distribution and no real relationship with the music world. Then we started traveling and going and doing shows and showing up to all of these places where people had our music. You know, people would read about us and try to buy the music but there was nowhere to get it, so they would go online and research and find stuff and download it. You can really see how our popularity kind of explodes simultaneous with the rise of Napster. In 2000-2001, when Napster kind of spikes, we were just kind of poised at the right place at the right time. We had written the music, we had written the shows, we had defined our image, there was plenty of material out there: people just kind of picked it up and it just took off.

So, I can’t begrudge the people downloading my music. What puts you in a difficult situation in the long run, is that if you can’t define your audience in numbers, then it makes it hard to keep people interested in investing in what you’re doing and it makes it hard to keep making work. I say “Take it, download it, enjoy it, listen to it, but if you want us to keep working then buy it.”

Or come see you live…

Or come see us live, yea, but even then it’s difficult and it’s hard for us to book tours, actually. We’ve never had big record sales and we don’t look successful on paper but promoters still look at record sales and how big of a push you have. We’re caught in an in-between where we haven’t left the antiquated, sort-of checks and balances of how you monitor your audience into the future yet. Everyone is sort of in this funny place where you’re not sure how you’re going to define or prove to a promoter that you have a following.

The listeners seem to be “with it” but the people writing the checks are still stuck in the past.

There’s just no real way, you know, it’s viral and organic and undefined, which is the beauty of it. It’s fantastic. Like we just played these shows in Mexico City and I was a little bit like ‘Oh Boy, this is the end of my career. I gotta come up with a new idea’ and all the shows were sold out! We’ve never had that much…you know, there are certain territories like Spain and Latin America or Russia that famously have poor record sales, due to tons of bootlegging. But these shows in Mexico, I was completely overwhelmed by thousands of people showing up and singing along to every word, knowing all the new material. Same thing in Spain, we had the most enthusiastic and incredible audience. So, the only thing frustrating to me about record sales, because I really don’t care about making a ton of money, all I really care about is to keep working as an artist and keep making great stuff and keep performing. Sometimes when we don’t have great sales numbers it makes that step very difficult.

Finally, what can people expect from the West Coast tour and what do you expect from the shows, as well?

This is a show we’ve been writing and it’s kind of constantly in development and evolving that we’ve been doing for the past year. It’s for the new album “Entertainment’ and it’s a piece that we built that’s very fluid and cumulative. So every performance sort of builds on the previous performance, so we shoot each one and use video from them and put them back into the show. We’re always evolving the show and getting new ideas and making changes. It’s sort of a pop show about pop shows and every time we do one, it’s like anything that happens informs the next one. It’s got this, I don’t want to sound too geological, but it has this strata: every time we perform it’s another layer and every time we perform it goes on top of another layer and it keeps building and building.

What do I expect? (pause) I expect to have a great f*cking time!

Casey, thank you very much and I can’t wait for the show.

Thank you.