Shawn Rios is the drummer for a few bands in Chicago. Most prominently his band Stolen Silver has started their month-long artist residency at Schubas Tavern. Every Monday night in February you can see Stolen Silver as well as other acts open up for them. Shawn has played in over 30 bands in his career including drums for Daniel Johnston and session work for Jason Mraz. Shawn met the Chicago Examiner for a fun and lengthy conversation about the entire music industry past, present, and future.
Shawn and Ian sit down and chat about what to eat pizza then start really talking.
Ian Jones: I really like talking to old people more than young people.
Shawn Rios: Everyone is so dismissive of that group.
I: Everyone thinks “I’m special” for no real reason these days.
S: How much mediocrity do we celebrate these days? We have sites to go on to say that we’re eating a ham sandwich and there are thirty comments about it. Relationships rise and fall under this template. If you dive in deeper there are some really cool clusters of scenes.
I: I’ve noticed that in kids of my age there are pockets of bands, then the frontrunner of that pocket, and I would assume that at least all the frontrunners all have to know each other somehow but they don’t.
S: Pilsen’s doing it right now. Logan Square has more of the bands like my age and the avant-garde jazz guys. Wicker’s got-(Ian interrupts)
I: Hipster doofus stuff.
S: Hipster douche rock, dance rock, Yacht rock, but at the same time there’s a lot of money in that circle. You walk into Rodan and there are people in Tortoise hanging out. Or you go to Rainbow and its old style meets the new hipster kid who weighs 80 lbs. and no one knows who he is and suddenly he’s playing Pitchfork this summer and everyone thinks how did you get into the Smith Westerns? That’s a weird band to me.
I: Why so?
S: I mean any band comes out of nowhere. I get that. But it was such a connection thing, their connection to Pitchfork. The Smith Westerns are the clear example of that generation of that music. Kids that are 21 or 22.
I: I remember at their Pitchfork show they said “you can come buy us booze.”
S: They couldn’t even buy drinks, yet they got one nod from Pitchfork and they blew up and their on an Asian scene now. They’re touring the world and they were there when that stage collapsed. When it happened the first thing their singer tweeted was “I hope these f**kers have our gear covered” and he got all this backlash and it went on MSNBC and Huffington Post and all the sudden he took it down and was like “I hope everyone is okay” y’know “our prayers are with them” but when you read the local write ups about them, they were a band that didn’t pay their dues. I’m not going to bash bands that make it to the top if you’re good you’re good, but they didn’t even have a chance to do anything. They didn’t even play a show and blew up and all the sudden this record is drenched in production and drenched in reverb. And that seems to be the thing with bands these days it’s not about voice or about singing it’s about being this collective movement. You give it this west-coast wash and this glow of reverb and hum and a lot of space to it. My whole point is that aesthetic is taking over and it’s making people very successful very fast. You’re in Urban Outfitters putting on jeans and a band that started playing six months ago is suddenly playing music and you’re hearing these kids and you think “who are these people?” and there’s a million of them and all the sudden they’re affording to tour, and kids are doing it with these networks. But they’re doing it, and before you know it they’re in a Volkswagen commercial and they got 65 grand to do it. You went from Wilco to Smith Westerns and Tommy Hilfiger in a month. Tommy Hilfiger took their song within a month of them blowing up, they went worldwide. Now you wonder how long they’ll last.
I: One band I interviewed Rites, was talking about how their favorite bands were acquired tastes or ones they listened to for years like Beatles, Wilco, Radiohead, those bands were able to grow with their sound and grow up and still be cool and almost be cooler. Like you listen to The Bends or Pablo Honey and then you listen to Kid A and you’d never even think it was the same band. I think it’s these younger guys like that guy in Wavves, I don’t think that he’ll do anything really monumental to look at in forty years. You can’t be the Kurt Cobain famous overnight anymore, what that turned out to be now is that you’ll be like Wavves and you’ll be able to sell 10,000 copies and tour and make money overnight. But I don’t know if that’ll last. Just like Nirvana.
S: Just like the whole music economy is crushed now and it’s all these small labels. You’re not going to make money off radio anymore. You’re not on David Geffen like Nirvana was. What used to be radio airplay, people used to make money off record sales and radio airplay, and now commercials are the new radio airplay, scoring a thing on Grey’s Anatomy and getting paid $35 grand.
I: Glee.
S: You start tweeting about you scoring on Glee and you’re getting more attention. Licensing is the new radio airplay. That’s the new thing, it’s sought after. Back in the 90s that was still the tail end of “we can’t be part of that commercialism.”
I: Technically that’s what selling out is. But now it seems people love to do that.
S: Now because you have a 23 year old whose a creative director for some small startup company in Brooklyn and somehow they got ahold of one great account and they were there at the right time when they could catch a Waves or Jay Reatard or Smith Westerns song and they just scored the deal of a lifetime because they wrote a song. It’s happening very, fast. Especially the change in people’s attention spans it’s amazing.
I: What was that like when you were first playing music? Was there an equivalent of that? I’ve grown up in an era where like the first ‘internet band’ I found was the Dandy Warhol’s and the song “We Used to be Friends” and it sort of came full circle for me because that song had the lyric “When Michael Jackson dies we’re covering Blackbird” and then I got to see Michael Jackson die and I got to see that bad cover of “Blackbird” come out like it was just pumped out in less than a week. I don’t even think the full band was in the studio.
S: They did it just because there’s a headline to say they did it. When I was younger there weren’t that many people compared to now. Not everyone wanted to be in a band. The internet wasn’t really around so it was truly about the live show. No blogs, no Day Trotter, no Pitchfork, no email blasts, it was just about how many people you brought to the show. What was great is that if you could get on a label was that-(Ian interrupts).
I: They could distribute.
S: Yep, they could put you on tour and pay for it. I don’t know many bands getting things when they go on tour. Also, EP’s weren’t such a big deal like they are now. Music is a lot more quickly digested so you can stand to get a 4-5 song EP from someone and you don’t need a full length. It’s a singles based economy and I think there’s pros and cons to that. I miss the whole album, I miss it. Wilco still does it.
I: Lots of bands still do it, the full narrative, it’s just that some bands that can’t hold that.
S: Or they can’t afford it.
I: Well that and I also think that someone like Nathan from Wavves or the Smith Westerns you could hit randomizes on iTunes and the album would have basically the same movement.
S: It’s palatable, it’s digestible more quickly. You know when people talk about the stuff on their iPod and they say, “oh this is old” and the album was made in 2010. I used to spin records for 3-4 years at a time. That was fun to me to put thought into it. Now it’s looked at as a little passé to not have 10,000 artists in your collection.
I: You’ve got 50 years of music when you’re 20 years old.
S: Also I think that people’s expectations were a lot different. Music has always been about scenes, but people expressing themselves at shows are a lot different. These days you hear a lot of people talk about it. People know that you’re enjoying a show these days if you’re standing still with your arms crossed. That’s your undivided attention. It was different music back then, people were more expressive, and it doesn’t mean you got to mosh. I don’t see that these days.
I: In my whole life I’ve seen weird stuff, like I started going to shows nobody in my school knew of. When I was in high school one of the shows that changed my life was because my girlfriend found this band The Pharmacy on MySpace and I fell in love with them because I’d never heard a real ‘indie band’ before. My girlfriend at the time and I went to Schubas and I pronounced it “Scuba’s” and her mom had to drive us on a school night, and I think we had to talk our way in because we weren’t twenty one. We were there to see The Pharmacy who was opening and she knew some others. They were the opener of I think four bands so there was nobody in the crowd. It was us and this crazy African American woman with the coolest clothes and a rainbow Mohawk that I’d never seen anything like before. There were stragglers on the edges of the space, but once the show started we started dancing, and after the show we were like “hey that was really fun we’re Ian and Nora” and she was like “oh hey my name is Kimya” and that’s when I learned it was Kimya Dawson. I didn’t know who she was till she got on stage and years later and she got big through Juno which goes along with all this commercial stuff going on now. And the Pharmacy just released a new EP and they really do a lot of EP’s and their live show is their thing. I feel that the only people that dance now are the people who are that drunk girl or the kid who is too young to know it isn’t cool yet.
S: Or at Dan Deacon or Girl Talk show and it’s great. It’s intense. Very few artists can still do that. The music is still there, the offer to the crowd is still there but it’s a non-expressive mindset these days. I was one of the few people dancing at the last Phoenix show I saw. That’s one of the primary differences. And everything is so saturated these days. There’s a new band every single month, day. I remember hearing a figure that two years ago 120,000 records came out in a single year worldwide. How does that work? It’s intimidating as a musician.
I: There’s no way that you could hear it all.
S: No, but I want to. I still want to. You mentioned a good point, the bands that grow up with you because they hit the right point of the label/music economy and they’re still viable. The average age of a guy in Wilco is 45 and there are people calling it “dad rock” and it’s not “dad rock” its brilliant art. They’re still vital. Pitchfork still cares about it. These are guys who are all dads, they all are dads and I can relate to that. It gives me hope.
I: I think a lot of people, like the movie The Other F-Word and those guys who are like Lard Fredrickson, and you got “F**K” tattooed across your face, but you’ve got to still drive kids to soccer practice. I don’t know I think of that punk scene like a blip. Not that I wasn’t even there for it, but from what I can gather it looks like everyone had this mindset that we’ll all be young forever, and over dose on heroin or something. And you either did or you didn’t and you’re still here to be a real person once the party is over. I feel that’s happening again with all this reverb stuff. I have a lot of friends that are doing that and I don’t see it passing and I don’t even like it that much.
S: Yeah it is in every commercial, store, and every TV show, I hate to sound so cynical but it’s all true. You can go on Garage Band and it’s amazing what you can do. But then there’s the subject of the necessity to go in a studio anymore, and all you have to buy is a condenser microphone, some vocal mics, a few pre-amp and you’re set. Very easy to let technology foster creativity. I think in a sense that’s great. If I can go on tour and bring an iPad with me and come back with an EP of fully realized ideas and creations that’s great. I just think that the time that it takes, that they should put into the craft and improve on it as a musician. You can sound prissy to say are an artist, and a lot of people don’t warrant that title, but I think that a lot of people don’t take their craft seriously. My friend Matt Johnson plays drums for St. Vincent, he played drums for Jeff Buckley, and he’s got a real bone to pick with this, he’s not a spring chicken. He’s in his mid-40s and he’s watching this tuff happen he’s been in the scene since the early 90s and he’s seen the change too. The value of a craft, people think that means soloing. It’s not that important to people anymore. It’s not to say that everyone has to be Jeff Buck or Thom York. But it’s more of the collective move and attitude; they don’t have time in their 10,000 band iPod to dissect your craft, the nature of what you do and how you do it.
I: I don’t even think people have to time to get struck by lightning and feel inspired when they see something. I feel people don’t even have time to do that or listen to lyrics or anything. What it’s more about, what I called it, are you familiar with hardcore? In the grind core genre, before my time I imagine it was actually very scary guys who actually got in knife fights and did heroin. Then after Emo it turned into a bunch of guys that actually were wearing girl jeans and would whisper into a mic then produce it and not tear up their vocal chords and learn to play guitar real fast in jazz club and never say they were in jazz club and it turned into “Song title core” and it was how people would judge if they liked a band or not-how ‘brutal’ your song titles or band name was. The music didn’t matter because it all sounds the same.
S: It becomes the mimic and not the emotion anymore. There used to be an old statement that was in jazz circles, that “what would they have to say?” In a movie on bob Dylan, these jazz guys would compare what your worth was to their liking was “what did they have to say, what was their statement?” You open up old records from the 60s and Johnny Cash wrote a four page liner note essay on bob Dylan, why? People don’t do that anymore, people don’t even have records. The whole feel of a musician being like a painter still exists with certain artists. I think a lot of this younger generation is ditching that. It also matches sort of their place socially. It’s about impulse it’s about instant gratification. It’s about y’know “I want to quit my job because’ I was inspired by…
I: It doesn’t even matter what you’re inspired by.
S: Yeah like, they saw Garden State and heard The Shins. Don’t get me wrong great record.
I: I think that taking apart what someone would say in the realm of those jazz guys is something to keep in mind. If I were thinking of those grind core guys in “Song title core” if I could hand them the microphone to the world and everyone could hear what you had to say for one minute, what would they say, they probably would probably just get nervous and make up some snarky statement to cover up the fact that they didn’t have anything to say. And there’s actually a band called my friend Brian is in, BIGCOLOUR. I’ve seen a few of his shows, and I saw him open up for a band he admires and talk to them afterwards and I realized, “oh that’s how you do it without the internet” and he also does use the internet to promote himself. But then I saw them play the same house party after the show on accident after going to see another show that night. The reason I like his music so much is because there’s so much meaning behind it. I told him about this random shoegaze dance song I had found on the internet. It was the only song this band put out and I told him how I thought it was about the band’s dead friend even though it was so happy and he replied without missing a beat “that’s makes sense, that means it actually means something to the band.” So then every time I listen to his songs I think about the story and you could never tell the story behind what he’s singing or saying, but he feels it and people feel it. I think that’s the quickest way to decipher through all the saturation what someone’s worth as a songwriter is, how much it means to them.
S: I remember 1991 like it was yesterday when I went to a house party and the band that was there was some high school band. Jokers Wild a silly basement band and they played “Smells like Teen Spirit” before I heard it on the radio. It had come out that week so my first impression of that song was through them and it still translated. Those chords going in that exact order it was like punk rock in reverse, it was nuclear. The image being next to the drummer and everyone slam dancing in my friend’s living room, I’ll never forget that. Then Pearl Jam 10 came out and the Pixies were releasing stuff and it was great. Then in 2001 the labels start dismantling, and Radiohead comes out with Kid A which is like the next vision of the future it changed everything. Pitchfork gives a Perfect 10 for the first time. The Strokes release Is This It which is incredible. Then suddenly you had a million bands that are wearing skinny ties and Converse. My whole point to that is that, you think of how many bands existed in 2001 compared to now.
I: All the bands created since then till now probably equal the entire bands total back then.
S: Well is there going to be another movement? Are the numbers too big now for anyone to take to that next level? Is there ever going to be a band like Radiohead, or Wilco, or Broken Social Scene that will be vital? Can it happen now with the short expectations that everyone has? It’s going to be weird that as a kid there’s going to be no real heroes to cling to.
I: When I was young my heroes were nobodies. The first time I found an underground band was being twelve and I downloaded a Simple Plan song that was labeled wrong. It was this was fuzzy stuff totally DIY. I didn’t know you could record music like that. I found out it was Rufio this pop-punk band played what I thought was the fastest riffs on earth and it was just an arpeggio. Through Google searches I found them and I found a book called Nothing Feels Right. It was this guy saying that the new rock-stars are people at that level. I treated that band like rock-stars but not big bands like rock-stars. I idolized them. Those guys in Rufio never made it and they got signed to Nitro and made one record and made a bad second one to I assume fulfill the contract and it wasn’t angsty because they grew up or something. It’s almost got to stay down there, and once your band is heard you have to ditch it and steal a new car.
S: It’s an interesting thing having a child and a wife and I feel I play better because of it. I feel at 35 years old I’ve had a lot of fun touring, but it’s like now maybe the doors are opening and I am mature enough to do it right. It doesn’t hurt to be married to a singer.
I: What was your most favorite tour?
S: Hmm good question. Either doing some session work, not even a tour. I’d transplanted to Birmingham Alabama to do session drum work and I found out the stuff I was working on was Jason Mraz’s first record. I felt like I was actually doing something that was worth something that was being used because I played an instrument. Tour wise, out of the thirty three bands I’ve been in the best was with Dick Prall. The music was well received and because of the camaraderie in the band. No drugs no bulls**t and all trading music showing each other stuff we’d never heard before. Or maybe CJM in New York.
I: One of my teachers told me people in NY still jump at shows.
S: You could tell the difference between towns. In Milwaukee people love live music because they want to see it even if they don’t know who you are.
I: They go out to experiment.
S: I think Empty Bottle does a good job with the Free Monday thing, and you can always count on seeing something cool, and it’s a coveted spot. It’s also great touring plaything something like SXSW when you can play 4-5 different places and venues in each place and get to feel the city and each venue is a different part of the city like the daytime show, the big venue, the house party, and the start-up blog like Day Trotter that’s all the sudden getting big, then the event sponsored by Vitamin Water with all the free stuff.
I: Day Trotter is amazing.
S: Can you believe that guy’s done over 1,000 drawings of bands? There are a lot of Chicago things doing stuff like that like AudioTree, Hear Ya Blog, there’s a bunch of Chicago nuggets like that.
I: I just found Black Cab Sessions and I’m not sure if any of my friends had heard of it. I was surprised it was so small.
S: And if you go on their site it’s endless.
I: Yeah, but some of their videos have 120 views. That’s nothing.
S: Yeah, Andrew Bird in a car with St. Vincent or something. Win Butler with his wife in the back of a cab.
I: Or Grizzly Bear, all of them in there.
S: That’s got to smell too. Then there’s Blogoteqhue, they have Tiny Desk Sessions.
I: I like when artists do that. I think those things are the way of the future. People that do that are the real artists compared to just bands in it for the money. I also see a lot more bands playing house shows now because they like the energy more than a venue.
S: Yeah, it’s all about the alternative space now, the anti-venue, venue. Whether it be a loft party, or a park, or a basement, or a storefront in Pilsen. That place in Pilsen that’s the old plant nursery and it’s a greenhouse and bands play inside the greenhouse. I heard 5 bands play there and they were all amazing, and one was a speed-metal band. I went there and it was 500 kids there and it was vital, how did they all know that place was there and Chicago’s got tons of it. To see that shit you used to have the Fireside Bowl and Fullerton and Kedzie that was the place to go see shows. Empty Bottle Productions tried that for a while with a place called Aviary, and it was in a manufacturing thing in a big gigantic 3rd floor loft. And they tried operating without a PPA license so they got cited for it, and Empty Bottle Productions is a pretty legit organization and they decided to keep having shows there and they got busted, and the environment was amazing there. There were 30-40 foot ceilings and the stage was about two feet tall and homemade cocktail parties. That introduced me to Dan Deacon and he was there with these glowing skulls, and it became a famous story because someone had stolen the skulls from the venue and did a big post about it and retrieved one of them. That kind of vibe was amazing everyone was dancing and going nuts. Back in 2006 the birth of the guy-girl duo and if I see another one I’m might cut someone’s dick off. If I see another duo where the guy’s the drummer and the girl plays bass or guitar tuned low to ‘fill frequency.’ I remember seeing Matt and Kim first came out at Sub T and it was like a girl talk show or Dan Deacon show and everyone was on stage and the thing where photographers love they are surrounded by people and everyone was going nuts and sweating and going berserk. That brings back the way that I used to see punk rock and Minor Threat and Fugazi. Paying $5 for a show and no more than $7 for a record. You weren’t allowed to stage dive and wanted to be considerate to people who wanted to see the show. And I’ve seen it firsthand where Ian MacKaye would escort you out of the show and give you double your money back for stage diving and he’d DO it.
I: My dad told me that the first time he saw the Dead Kennedy’s was in Rodgers Park walking and it said “DEAD KENNEDY’S TONIGHT” spray painted on a sheet or something and then “TONIGHT” was crossed out to say “RIGHT NOW.”
S: The whole art of the flyer doesn’t happen that way anymore. And people can’t see shows and stuff, and that’s why I am booking fests now, picking the talent and picking the bands.
I: I think that’s great. You can totally tell when it’s someone who doesn’t even like music who picked the bands, and they didn’t even do something like hire their son’s friend to screen it or pick something. You can tell when that happens, but not as much as I saw it before.
S: People are starting to notice the attention with fests. And you look at a city like Chicago from May to September there is a street fest every week.
I: Yeah like the progression of Wicker Park fest from two years ago to this one was insane, or Green Fest, which went from Cloud Cult to Yo La Tango.
S: I’m actually working with those guys at Green Fest to make a better fest. Or even doing it in a bigger way where we get charities involved.
I: I know I almost thought it was a lie that someone made a spoof flyer that said Yo La Tango and the day I got off the train from work and they were playing and she was like “who is this?” and I told her to just sit and listen. She used to like those dirty hippy festivals and we volunteered picking up trash at Summer Camp which I’m glad about because it was disgusting festival and I would have never paid to be that dirty. And it was cool because some of the vendors there were cool like actually people who cared about the environment and half was it ‘learn how to grow pot in your basement’ or ‘look at these trippy pictures’ and I didn’t like that and it was scummy people with scummy money and there was such a doorway to do something awesome there.
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