Altered Zones

[Photo by Cocola]

By Max Burke

Matt "MV" Valentine: "PK Dick"

Matt Valentine has been a leading light of the American underground free/freak-folk scene for well over a decade. From his early work at the helm of New York's legendary Tower Recordings ensemble to his long-running collaboration with partner Erika Elder in MV & EE, Valentine fuses elements of traditional folk, blues, and American psychedelic rock into an idiosyncratic playing style that has garnered an international cult following over the years. In addition to Valentine's countless collaborations with American underground artists like Sunburned Hand of the Man's John Moloney, Vibracathedral Orchestra's Mick Flower, New England drum prodigy Chris Corsano, and J Mascis, he has just released a record, What I Became (Woodsist), on which he plays nearly every instrument. Speaking to Altered Zones on the phone from his Vermont home base, Valentine touched on his his impetus for recording a proper solo album, his New York days, and the ways his life and art have changed since he re-located to rural Vermont nearly a decade ago.

AZ: You’re perhaps best known for your collaborations. What prompted you to try recording something on your own?

Matt: I reckon I'm always playing with so many other people that I tend to not find enough time to focus on doing something under the header of just my own name, as a sole sovereign. With the new record, I pretty much play every instrument myself, so it took a lot more time and resources. There's a certain amount of ego to doing a record under your name. I never felt the need to do something like that before. I don't wanna necessarily say it was more personal; it's not like there is more of me in What I Became than there is in any other of my musical involvements. [It's more] about how I was going to be under the most scrutiny. In the end, I think I was just trying to do something while I was living simply, but also in tune with the times, which are very fast. I think the combination of those two things--  my philosophy of life going head-to-head with the way things are in contemporary society--  has a lot to do with why it takes me so long to put something out. But I've been getting more comfortable with doing it, and getting more interested in it as well. The work that I do specifically with Erika, or the whole circumference of the Golden Road, touches on way broader sensibilities than I can as one person. I was trying to use everything I learned from that and bring it into my record: a one-man band, drawing on the collective experience.

AZ: The song "PK Dick" was released on a 7" a few years back. Is this a collection of songs that you've worked on over the years?

Matt: Well, I've been working on the record since even prior to Space Chanteys, which is the first song record, in terms of a vocal songster approach. We recorded that in 2000/2001. The song "Avenue B," on What I Became-- we sketched that out all the way back then.

AZ: And this was when you were still living in New York?

Matt: Yeah. I was living in New York on Fourth Street and First Avenue, but before that I had lived on Avenue B and that was the inspiration of the song. Living down there, I used to see a lot of gigs. There was a place called the Collective Unconscious and there was a place called Gaseteria, a converted gas station. That's where GG Allin did his last show, and died on my doorstep. He threatened to kill himself at the show, but died later that evening.

AZ: While you were living there?

Matt: Yeah, Avenue B and Second Street. When we did Space Chanteys I was living on Fourth Street and we recorded that out in DUMBO with my friend Barry Weisblat. He custom-built a lot of things for me. He recorded most of that record with Dean Roberts and Tim Barnes in his space in DUMBO. So we cut that track ["Avenue B"] for the session, but we didn't release it. I might've just done it with Samara Lubelski. It never really got finished; it was kind of a sketch. That's the oldest concept piece on the album. "PK Dick" crept in. We've played that as a duo with MV & EE and we've also done it as a trio with Willie Lane at some shows. But the moon phase wasn't right or something; it never showed up on a live release, so it was in the vaults.

AZ: So a lot of this material has a long history prior to the record?

Matt: Yes, but everything for What I Became was recorded within a year. "Avenue B" was revamped and I just hit it. Sometimes songs are like that for me; I don't feel like I'm grasping its full [potential], and so I don't do it. Sometimes I'm just wide open and songs come and I'm able to harvest them. But, even though I'm able to get them, it doesn’t mean they're necessarily right for release. It might seem I actually release a lot of material, but the amount stuff in the vault and the amount of stuff that's being nurtured is far more vast. It's not like I record something and it gets released. There's a lot of careful planning on how these things get…compartmentalized, if you will.

Between two Winters from this year to 2010/2011 was when I started tracking everything for the record. A lot of different takes of certain songs and certain times, different times of day and so forth. That's the beauty of making a solo album like this and working with Woodsist. Jeremy Earl [Woods member and founder of Woodsist Records] really pushed me to do it, 'cuz I wasn't thinking about it. It made me kick back and take as much time as I needed. I didn’t have any real deadlines, so I was able to have that advantage of looking at the songs and trying to find what I felt was the purest distillation of what I was trying to say.

AZ: So the idea of putting a record out under your own name came from Jeremy?

Matt: Yeah, he pushed me to do it. We started working together around the time of Barn Nova. We had done some gigs together, and I had presented a show for Woods and Religious Knives up here. I was aware of what he was doing. We had done the tape on [Woodsist sister cassette label] Fuck It Tapes, the raga tape [Ragas of the Culvert] that got reissued by Cory [Rayborn, of Three Lobed Records] in a slightly different form. We kind of hit it off and he started to understand my work ethic and started to come up and visit me and see what was going on with these mounds of tapes and my habits. I think maybe he heard something or I was playing something, and he said "Why don't you do that song?" and I said, "Oh, it wasn't in bloom yet." I was missing one key thing I felt like I didn't unlock. He had been saying, "Why don't you just do it?" So he pushed me and pushed me. I was like, "I don't wanna do a solo record; I'm not really feeling it. It's not really the right time for me." But he was persistent and one year later from when he started pushing me I was able to deliver it.

AZ: MV & EE just put out at a new full length, Country Stash. Was the idea to put both records out at the same time?

Matt: Yeah, part of it was kind of a weird centrifuge all of a sudden. Having these two things come out. Not because they're the most current works, but there was a lot of time put into both those records. They were both made in a very similar way, except one was the band and one was just me. The actual method was like a very slow-cooked process. Country Stash was partly recorded in England, so we were in multiple studios with that, and there was more of a budget with that record. Andy [Ramsay] from Stereolab owns the studio that we did a lot of stuff in and he came on tour with Erika, Mick [Flower, of Vibracathedral Orchestra] and I on our last UK tour and played drums. He was really into the music and wanted to help out as much as he could and just get involved. So we scheduled a few days off there and went and worked in the studio. It was a great experience, and I felt really inspired. You can’t really make a lot of records like that. Usually you get a couple weeks, and you have enough money to use a studio just once or twice. Whereas with Jeremy, he was like, "You know, just see what you can do in your home studio." So that’s why it was a slow-burn, but the idea of them coming out at the same time was just a total coincidence.

Matt "MV" Valentine: "Hit The Trails"

AZ: You've created a cottage industry with your label Child of Microtones and your small-run, artist edition records. Is that a product of being in Vermont and the attitude up there?

Matt: Well, I think we had the attitude before coming. When we started COM in 1999, the first three releases we did when we were in New York. It was a pioneering venture-- a pioneering spirit that drew us up here in the first place. In our own utopian way we thought it would last because we were building a proper foundation through using good tools, and to some extent it’s true, because we’re still able to do it. I was making hand-mades today and some of the paints that I use are really strong. It looks great, but man, I tell you, it's like a slippery slope. [Laughter]. Doing the hand-mades ties into the COM thing and more recently, the Heroine Celestial Agriculture series, which has become a vehicle for our live shows. We're doing those on a socialist basis, just getting them out to people in a way that makes sense economically, where we can have something like that for five bucks on the table at a show, [in contrast to] collectors getting the bug for some of the rarer records, which are more ephemeral. You miss one, and hopefully I’ll make another one. It's kind of the "small is beautiful" trip. It's interesting for us to keep fertilizing that. I think that's come out of the Vermont thing-- the freedom and unity trip. It's more of a working society, and not about getting money.

AZ: You release a lot of material, you hand-craft a lot of things. What's your perception of your fan base, of the people who buy your records?

Matt: I'm into the fact that there are people who really get into it on a lot of different levels. It seems like it's not just the collectability or fetish angle. It seems deeper. The real heads, they get into a different thing-- something rooted more in the music. There's a thing with the object too, that's why I’m driven to make these hand-mades, and why we still do COM. COM 35 came out this year, and the Heroine catalog is of unknown depth. [Laughter]. Today, you can make a cassette in an edition of one, and a day later the world can hear it-- it could go viral. When we first started that didn't exist, so you know it's a bit of a different thing, even if we make an edition of 99. It’s an ephemeral thing. I know with the artists I collect-- art, books, or whatever-- I really want the object. I wouldn't want to be looking at it on a screen or hearing it without having the totality of it. Like anybody who makes something, you have to be responsible. I'm just grateful it keeps growing. I tend to know where everyone is now and people get in touch with me looking for certain things. It's far out. I feel really connected with it. That's the ultimate goal of any cottage industry, [to produce] what the cottage can produce without going beyond its means. It's a local economy, even if someone in Japan is buying the record. It's one of the things that keeps me doing it. I couldn't be more ecstatic.

AZ: Looking back on the nine years since you left New York for Vermont, how would you say your life has changed most significantly?

Matt: We had an interim scene where we subletted our place and we lived in this one-room cabin that had hydroelectric power for a summer. We went off with one guitar, a little field recorder-- Erika had some other smaller stringed instruments and percussion. [There was] pretty much no electricity, no toilet, no water, and it was really primitive. It was on like 300 acres of land in the Berkshires. We were like, "We did this. We were able to do it, I think we can leave. We can drop out and make a stab at it." We've been in the same place since we moved. This is the ninth year now.

AZ: You were part of the Tower Recordings scene in New York. Have you heard the Metal Mountains [Samara Lubelski, Helen Rush, and PG Six of Tower Recordings] record that recently came out?

Matt: Yeah, it's great. I'd seen a few of the shows. Everyone's got their own way of making records. It just seemed to take a while to get it finished. It's a masterpiece and has the T.R. spirit, right down to the black-and-white line art cover that we used back in the Tower days. Jarvis [Taveniere, from Woods] and a few other people told me that they were surprised how much my record sounds like a T.R. Record. To me all the records have [a T.R. sound]-- it's hard for it not to get in there.

AZ: You're still on good terms with all the Tower people?

Matt: Oh yeah, you betcha. Everyone's busy with their own projects. We invited PG Six to play this show at DreamAway Lodge out in Becket, Massachusetts. That's where Dylan stayed when they were doing the Rolling Thunder Tour. There's a kind of heaviness there, so we invited Pat [Gubler, of PG Six] up for that and we got jamming together out in the Lodge. There’s some newer MV & EE stuff that Samara plays on that'll hopefully come out on the next album. I'm up here, they're down there, and everyone's got their own lives. It's hard to get together to do something that used to come so naturally. The spirit of that is still around for sure, though.

AZ: What are some lesser known influences on your guitar playing?

Matt: I love most of the Takoma artists; it gets in there in different ways. There are guys like Al Wilson from Canned Heat that doesn't get talked about that much. I never was one of those guys who would copy riffs off records. I never assimilated one idiomatic style. I tried to get my own, or to filter out other people. That's why sometimes people can't get down with it because it doesn't sound like anybody else specifically. There are so many great records out there, from Ali Akbar Khan across to Skip James and then Michael Hurley. They would be the biggest influences on me if I was going for a certain model sound. Those are the players that resonate the most with me, but how it comes out through my style doesn't really sound like any of them at all. They would be like the father, son, and holy ghost to me. There are people I greatly admire: Peter Green [Fleetwood Mac], Garcia, Tom Verlaine. These dudes are massive but I don't necessarily feel like they are that big an influence on me.

AZ: Do you feel like you are part of a scene or community up in Vermont?

Matt: There's not a lot that happens in the immediate town where we are. But in the Pioneer Valley in general there's been a lot of activity for shows. There's this place called Feeding Tube Records that has a performance space in the back room and they've been booking a really strong program of events. So there's been a lot of great stuff coming through there, like touring acts. Locally there's like Rongoose Schneiderman [Sunburned Hand of the Man] from Spirit of Orr Records-- he's one of my neighbors. Feathers-- they're kind of a fragmented band now, but some of those people are still around and involved with projects. There's a cool space that opened up here where I hosted that Woods/Religious Knives show. That’s been taken over and revamped into an upscale, fantastic folk room [Headroom Stages]. That's where J Mascis played; I was sittin' in with J. It's very acoustically well designed. There's stuff like that that's bringing people into the area. John Moloney [Sunburned Hand of the Man] down in Northampton, the Fat Worm of Error people, Joshua Burkett who runs Mystery Train Records, and of course, Dredd Foole. Also a guy who plays under the name Crystalline Roses. There's a big community of artists and musicians-- a strong sonic architecture in the area.

AZ: Will you play any solo shows to support this record?

Matt: I don't know, we'll see.

AZ: Finally, I gotta ask if Green Blues gonna make it to vinyl?

Matt: We're talking about doing something. It's one of those things-- just timing. It should've happened when that record was released, because it would have been a great thing on wax. The timing of the session, it runs like sixty minutes in total-- it couldn't be broken up easily to vinyl. We were gonna try to do an extra cut, but we didn't wanna gyp people and we felt Green Blues worked so well as a whole. There's an outtake I thought would work but it changed the flow of the album. We felt like "Solar Hill" and "Grassthighs"-- the longer songs-- made statements. So it didn't happen at the time, and now it's gotten so far away from us we feel like it could happen any time. There's other stuff that needs to be nurtured and be released. It's gotta be green vinyl, I think. The plan is it's gonna happen someday. It would need to be remastered for vinyl. It's a big record for me. I'd want to get inside it and do the mastering myself.

What I Became is out now on Woodsist. MV EE embark on the brief "Suub Duub" tour in late July:

07/28 New Brunswick, NJ - Tumulty's Pub
07/29 Philadelphia, PA - Highwire Gallery
07/30 Easthampton, MA - Dubious Liftings festival