SOWING THEIR SEEDS

SOWING THEIR SEEDS

Once upon a time, Michael Hall sent a query to this mag, hoping to get into its pages as a rock scribe. It didn’t work out and his letter was sent off to freelance writing hell. CREEM hasn’t completely submerged his critical skills, though. His review of the Seeds’ newest LP consists of proud satisfaction for its live-in-the-studio sound tinged with unhappiness with certain parts that he considers “canned.”

"I think you get to a certain point in recording where in order to get a real good sound you have to spend a certain amount of time, but if you1 spend more than that amount of time you lose that sound and it sounds hopelessly muddled and studio-like, like a Fleetwood Mac record. Maybe there’s a certain point, like 12 days. Beyond that it starts to lose its spontaneity.”

Despite Hall’s hindsight, every cut on Mud, Lies & Shame, the Seeds’ new LP, contains enough of a spirited live feel to make its energetic numbers kick harder (“If I Were a Storm” and “You Will be Married to a Jealous Man”), while its quiet moments became more heart-wrenching (Kris McKay’s solo spot on “All This Time”). Which just about brings us back to why the 30-year-old Hall decided to make a change in profession even though his work saw the light of day in Trouser Press, Third Coast and the Austin Chronicle.

“I was a terrible writer,” he explains, "It’s so easy to write about what you really like and I was a real fan. I still am. But I wrote from a fan’s point of view and so I never really tried to write

as a prose craftsman. So it was garbage. That was one good thing about being a songwriter is actually learning how to write with craft, which I never really learned how to do as a journalist.

“I finally had to get out of it because I was getting my band together and h was trying to get a foot in the door of the clubs and try to open for some bands. It was definitely a conflict there between writing an advance about a touring band and then trying to open for them. It looked sticky, so I got out.”

After Hall began putting his full effort into the Wild Seeds in 1983, the first phase of the band played around the University of Texas. During that time they put out an independent EP, Life is Grand (Life in Soul City), that, like their following release, met with much critical acclaim.

Following their vinyl debut, Hall lost that original line up, but he carried on with a new batch of Seeds and recorded Brave, Clean & Reverent which was distributed by Jungle Records and consisted mostly demos of scattershot musical styles. A few more changes and Hall had the unit that created the far more cohesive Mud, Lies & Shame, which made its mark on college listeners since its release earlier this year.

Over half of the album’s 11 songs portray love in its most woeful states but counters that with well-timed humor. According to Hall, its title came from an essay on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in which the writer said, “Without love, everything is mud, lies and shame.”

“It almost seemed like there was a

general motif or theme running through everything,” Hall shrugs. “It wasn’t a real happy theme, but there was something there. I was even trying to figure out a way to put the songs in some sort of order so they made some linear sense like Pet Sounds or something. Then I thought that was too ambitious and pretentious.

"All the songs had to do with some kind of loss of love or unnecessary evil of love, the bad fallout from essentially a good thing. It all sort of fit together, at least lyrically. Musically, a lot of stuff on there is happier sounding.”

In the months since Mud’s release, the Seeds musical chairs tradition has continued—that means two more settlers in the Wild Seeds camp, including backup vocalist McKay, have gone on to greener pastures. With her powerful, wailing voice, McKay made a definite mark in the band’s overall sound, adding just the right amount of pain or warmth when needed and counterpointing Hall’s own vocals.

“She wanted to keep her distance in some ways,” says Hall. “She didn’t want to make a full commitment to the band (even being listed in the band’s bio as an ‘auxiliary member’). She wanted to keep her own options open, which was kind of maddening when you’re trying to build a real band solidarity, but at the same time I’m the lead singer, I write the songs and we can’t be the KrisMtKay backup band.

“I’d like to (replace her). I’d like to find another singer, but it’s hard to be just a singer in a band when you don’t play an instrument. So we’ve been keeping our eyes open but we’re not busting our ass to do it.”

The newest version of the Wild Seeds—Randy Franklin on guitar, Joey Shuffield on drums and Paul Swift on bass—are rehearsing for the band’s next record, which Hall feels should be more cohesive and, in direct contrast to M, L & S, avoid the subject of love.

“We’ve become a more manly band right now. It’s like having a woman live with you in the same house and you have four housemates. It’s a sexually mixed house. It changes the whole attitude, the whole ambiance of the house. It’s kind of the way it is in a band too. I like that a lot. It takes away from the natural tendencies when you get four young men together with loud guitars. They tend to turn into real dicks. So we’re becoming more dicky right now.”

John Gatta