Altered Zones

[Bill Orcutt live at Brickbat Books in Philadelphia, July 2010. Photo by Matthew Rademan]

By Max Burke

MP3: Bill Orcutt: "My Reckless Parts"

Bill Orcutt was the ax man for Harry Pussy, the infamous '90s Florida noise-rock group he founded with drummer Adris Hoyos, and that gave rise to his signature, four-string guitar sound. After the dissolution of Harry Pussy, Orcutt relocated to the Bay Area in 1997 to pursue a career in software engineering. He got married and worked for a variety of tech companies including eBay, which he left after his daughter was born in 2006. In 2008, he was asked by Load Records to assemble a compilation of Harry Pussy material. According to Marc Masters' recent profile on him for the "The Out Door," this was the spark that eventually led Orcutt to pick up music again.

The guitar he plays now is one he has had since college. In 2009, Orcutt released the A New Way to Pay Old Debts LP on his own Palilalia label and began performing live. Since then, he has released a number of limited 7" singles and an exemplary live 12", Way Down South, documenting a show in New Zealand. Late last year, Editions Mego re-released A New Way To Pay Old Debts on CD, with a number of bonus tracks. I spoke to Orcutt just before his set at this year's Neon Marshmallow Festival. That evening, Orcutt would open the show by imploring the audience to "Shut the fuck up," and his caustic, yelping vocal style would figure prominently. Mid-way through he would bait the Chicago crowd: "How's that Rahm Emanuel thing working out for you? You know he used to do ballet." The set would conclude with Orcutt screeching "Fuck!" before exiting the stage to a loud ovation.

AZ: Was there a particular impetus for self-releasing the New Way To Pay Old Debts LP and handling the subsequent releases yourself?

Bill: I guess I always had an option to release it through someone else. Why did I release it myself? It was just a way of being completely self-reliant, and not having to worry about somebody changing the cover image or not manufacturing it the way I expected it to be manufactured. And I really just wanted to do it all myself; I still prefer to do it myself. It's also physically nice to have to get the record in a box, sleeve 'em up. I enjoy that; I like physically being involved with making the record, and not just handing off the tape to somebody else.

AZ: On one of your new tour singles, "Tic Fit" b/w "Bored with The Moon," is an image of Chuck Berry and Mick Jagger. An early single, "High Waisted" b/w "Big Ass Nails," had a cut-up of Barack Obama/Jimi Hendrix on the cover. Is it easier to self-release this material because of the cover imagery?

Bill: I guess I don't have to worry about somebody else's concerns with copyright infringement. More control is always better for me.

AZ: Editions Mego recently re-released A New Way To Pay Old Debts on CD. Did they approach you for that?

Bill: I didn't have the wherewithal to keep it in print because I'm doing all the work myself. I think I got to 2,000 or 1,500 LPs at one point. I had to print a thousand covers at a time. I was like, "I'm not storing another 1,000 LP boxes in my garage." The hands-on connection is good but it also means I’m not gonna be making mass quantities of anything, which has its appeal.

AZ: Was there any aspect of starting play guitar again that could be crassly described as a mid-life crisis?

Bill: No, it was the opposite. I wouldn't describe any of it as a mid-life crisis. I just got excited again. I had really forgotten so much about music; it was out of my mind completely, and putting that compilation together really just brought it back in a way that made me want to pick up the guitar. I hadn't wanted to pick it up before.

AZ: I know you were listening to a lot of electronic music during that hiatus period. Is that something you would ever like to explore as a solo artist?

Bill: Right now I’m playing guitar. I mean, I was way, way deep into Editions Mego, which is why it was ironic when they contacted me about doing the record. Because in like 1997, '98, I would have lopped off a limb to have a record on Mego. I got really into Max/MSP, but from that I wound up going more deeply into programming than actually making music. I found the most interesting thing I could do with Max was to be a programmer rather than make music. In the end, I didn't know what to do with electronic stuff that didn’t sound derivative. At least with the guitar, I pick it up and it just sounds like me. With electronic music I didn't get to that point. But it was always fascinating, and I spent many, many hours obsessed with it, but I never got to the point where I had something that I wanted to release.

AZ: Is there another full-length record on its way, and will it feature vocals more prominently?

Bill: I'm about 70%, 80% done with the next full-length. The recordings are more about just documenting what I'm doing. I use the live shows as a way to throw myself out there and see what happens and say, "That was interesting." Wherever it feels like my brain wants to go, I just let it go in that direction, and the live shows are useful for working out exactly which way I'm pointed. So I have been dong the voice thing more and no doubt it will be featured more prominently on any future recordings, until I start going in some other direction that is to be determined.

AZ: You've played on a number of bills with Richard Bishop who was in a rather noisy and somewhat infamous Sun City Girls, contemporaneous with Harry Pussy. Both of you have turned toward an acoustic, relatively less confrontational style as solo artists. Do you see this as a natural or inevitable progression?

Bill: Wait until after the show to decide whether or not I'm confrontational.

AZ: What's your perspective on how underground touring and the overall scene has changed from when you were out gigging with Harry Pussy? Would you have envisioned a festival like Neon Marshmallow happening back then?

Bill: There's more going on. It's more organized and there's more people. I know Tom Lax had a Siltbreeze festival that we played. And that Siltbreeze thing was just a thing he had in Philly. He had Guided By Voices there, which was a big deal. There are just a lot more opportunities now to do stuff than there were then. We would tour around, we would tour up and down the East Coast and the South, the West Coast a couple times. There were never more than 30, 40 people at a show, and often many fewer than that. There's no question that there's more diversity in the music. Really, it was just all rock bands [back then], and weird rock bands and variations on that. There was one ambient band on Kranky [Labradford], I think.

AZ: What is it like to be playing a festival like this? You seem in the minority since you're not playing a guitar that's hooked up to a laptop or processed somehow.

Bill: It doesn't matter to me who's on the bill. I'm just happy to play.

AZ: Are you excited to be throwing yourself back into the touring life?

Bill: I'm trying to figure that out. I mean, some of it has been totally awesome. It's a lot of driving though. But I wanted to see what that would be like. I was a little bit intimidated because it has been so long since I had to do a six hour drive and then play. I mean the shows have been going fairly well and I've enjoyed it. I'm glad I did it, but I'm not sure when I’ll do it again.

AZ: What have you been listening to on your long drives?

Bill: Today I listened to a lot of ZZ Top. I was falling asleep and cranked up some ZZ Top and got through.