Fig & Mint

One of the brightest and most original groups to recently come out from Portland's rich musical scene is the dynamic dance duo Panther.  They recently finished a short East Coast jaunt and will  be going on the road in support of Ratatat beginning tomorrow.  I caught up with Charlie Humara, Joe Kelly and guest violinist Sara Welker before their recent DC show at The Velvet Lounge, and even stuck around for their set (which no one else seemed to be interested in doing, in spite of the fact that they were by far the best group on a four band bill...silly goth-kids).  I think a great time was had by all, as we delved deep into the mysteries of laxative tea, the horribleness of Canada and the most expensive Motel 6 in the world.

After talking for a few minutes and taking 2 pictures we begin the interview:

FM: Here we are with Panther, and we're just asking them about music, and they've apparently been listening to a lot of metal and The Bee-Gees, which I think describes Panther's sound fairly accurately.  Um, but I heard there's a story about a guy dying on a boat or something like that.

[laughter]

Charlie: Not exactly.  The guys were us.  This friend of ours is a maniac kind of guy and he tells us about this lady who has this boat, you know, this yacht on Lake Michigan in Chicago and it turns out to be this crazy nightmare.  So this lady is this middle-aged woman that he just met that's rich as hell, but everything goes wrong and so she's just like complaining.  She bought all this food and it was all wrong, like this fish was rotten and so  no one is eating anything, just getting incredibly drunk and smoking too much pot, and finally at midnight, we're still at the dock and everyone is getting on her nerves so she just yells, "Screw it, we're going out!" 

So we go out but the waves are completely out of control, but at this point she doesn't even care, she has the driver or whatever going like 50 miles an hour over these huge waves and so everyone is scared to death.  Joe is in the back of the boat drunk as hell hanging on for dear life.  So we almost died.

By the time we got back to the dock, this lady is screaming at our friend and so we just ran away from the boat and caught a cab back to where we were staying.

[more laughter]

Joe: The other big chunk of that story is that we got the giant burritos after that and passed completely out.  But we had to get up at some ungodly hour, like 6:30 in the morning, and drive all the way from Chicago to Toronto. 12 and a half hours of like the worst drive imaginable.  Have you ever driven through Canada?

FM: Oh, God no.

Joe: It's terrible. We were going 85 and people were blasting past us.  With our state of mind, it was scaring us to death.  I mean, we completely drove past Toronto.  Like 30 miles past Toronto before we realized we had gone too far.

Charlie: We were supposed to play at 9, and we didn't get there until 9:15, so we just double-parked the van in front of the club with the hazards on and everyone unloads their shit straight into the building.

Joe: We literally just grabbed everything and ran inside and straight to the stage. They said, "You've got 10 minutes."

Charlie: So we played for 10 minutes to these, just, blank stares.  A packed house of like 500 people, all completely blank. We were obviously opening up for this bigger band...

FM: So how was the set, was the 10 minutes good?

Panther in Unison: Mmm, no.  No it was terrible.

Charlie: We got pity claps. 

[Charlie laughs and adjourns to the restroom]

Joe: We were on this tour with this other band, and they had this tour bus with some kind of guarantees, so we had to sort of zig-zag all over the country to meet these guarantees,  but since they had this tour bus, they would get done with a show and go party and then come back and sleep and the bus driver would drive overnight to the next place while they were sleeping.  But we, on the other hand, would get done with the show, go party but then only have like 4 hours to sleep to get up and go drive where they had already driven the neight before.

FM: So you're schedules weren't really lined up.

Joe: No, and on top of that, the tour started and ended on the East Coast.  We're from the West Coast. So we had to drive across the country to start the tour, and then drive back after it was all over.

FM: That sucks.

Joe: Yeah.

FM: So that's why you say you're done driving across the country.

Joe: Well, I've done lots of US tours before that with other bands.  Panther did another similar one after that, and so that was just, meh.

FM: Is there a new Panther album in the works?

Joe: Yeah, we're working on a new one right now.  We've got a pretty good idea of what we're doing, and I think it's going to be different.  I don't know how much I'm allowed to say.

FM: Is KRS putting it out.

Joe: As far as I know.  I mean, I hope so.

[Charlie returns]

FM: Are there going to be more players, a fuller sound?  Or are you sticking with the same idea as the first one?

Joe: That's one of the things we're trying to figure out, if it's just going to be me and Charlie or not.  Charlie says that ideally he'll just be in a wheelchair all the time and let everyone else do everything.

Charlie:  You do it.

[At this point I go up to go retrieve some more drinks for the band.]

Charlie: The tea kicked in.

Sara: [laughs] I could tell when you came back.

Charlie [to Joe]: Dude, I drank this green tea.

Sara [is laughing]: This morning I came out and he said, 'Hey, I drank this decaf green tea that you had,' and I was like, "Oh no."

[I return to the table and everyone is laughing]

Charlie: Here's a good story.  This morning I woke up and we were all kind of tired or whatever, Joe was still asleep.  We were in Brooklyn at her place and I found this decaf green tea and, long story short, it's laxative tea. 

Sara: I came down and he said, "I drank some of your tea," so I asked him if it was in a green box and he said "Yeah...why?"  And I just said, "You don't want to drink any more of that."

[Everyone laughs.  We have a brief discussion about the size of DC as compared to New York, which ends with Charlie asking me what part of Mississippi I'm from.]

FM: Uh, well I grew up in Meridian, MS, but I spent the past 6 years in Jackson.

Joe: I hear Jackson can be pretty cool.

FM: Well, it can be and it can't be, you know what I mean.  It's a small city.

Charlie: Isn't [an undiscernable band name] from Jackson?

FM: Um, that doesn't ring a bell.  Really the only band that's made it out of there in recent years is...uh...crap...freakin', you know...superman or something...eh...3 Doors Down.  3 Doors Down, they're a Jackson band.

Charlie: I don't know them.

FM: That's because they're terrible.  They're absolutely awful.

Sara: Aren't they like Linkin Park or something?

FM: Yes, exactly.  Hard radio rock for trailer park kids whose daddies didn't hug them.  That's basically what the Jackson music scene is composed of if you don't like blues, which is obviously really good down there, although it's dying, which totally sucks.  I mean, all these artists all over the world credit these old Mississippi blues guys that influenced their sound, but no one goes there to support it and keep it alive.  The Subway Lounge was the most famous juke joint in Jackson and it closed down a few years ago.  It was pretty much the last true juke in Jackson proper.

Joe: I love Mississippi Fred McDowell, I listen to him a lot.

FM: Right on!  He's my favorite bluesman.  I went to his grave in Senatobia in the middle of nowhere after a Black Crowes concert in Memphis.  So, anyway.  Have y'all ever been to Mississippi?

Joe: Yeah, we've been there alot.

FM: Where did you play there?

Joe: Well, we never actually played there but we've driven through there alot.  Stayed in your wonderful selection of Motel 6s.

FM: Yeah, the state is known for that.  Lots of great Motel 6s.

Charlie: The thing I remember was how expensive they were.

Joe: Oh, that's right!  We stayed in that one that was like 90 dollars.  Mississippi has the most expensive Motel 6s ever.  And they didn't even give us a noon checkout.  Like they expect people who stay at Motel 6s to be early risers.

FM: How does touring help your sound?  Do you work out new things when you do live shows?

Charlie: Yeah, we experiment alot, but we also find that we definitely play better, keeps us sharp.

FM: I've never seen you guys live, but I love 14 Kt. God, it's a great album.  So how does what I hear on the album translate into the live experience?

Charlie: Live music is rarely exactly the same, nor should it be really.  I mean, it's more hectic, there's more improvisation and I think more energy.  Also having live strings is different but a lot of fun.

FM: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that aspect.  The string arrangements on the album are really good.  There's also alot of strange time signatures and changes, so I guess playing that kind of thing live is a challenge but the practice helps keep everything tight.

Joe: Actually that's not much of an issue.  Me and Charlie both used to play in prog rock bands.  People actually say that a lot, about the time signatures, and my response is like, 'Really?'  I mean, this is the easiest music we've ever played.

[both laugh]

FM: What kind of prog? Like Mahavishnu or King Crimson, or...

Joe: Uh...I was in a band that mixed alot of Japanese stuff with more Yes type stuff, his band was like Genesis or something like that.  Like hard-edged Genesis. 

[A short discussion ensues, in which Charlie briefly explains some elements of the live show, in which there are basic tracks laid down already and then drums, vocal loops, guitar and violin are added on top of the basics, a process that allows the band to present the songs as they are on the album, but is loose enough to allow improvisation and experimentation, leading to a different show each time.]

FM: So I'm curious how the violin sort of found its way into all this.  [to Sara] Do you have any classical training?

Sara: I have some.

FM: So coming and playing in a...well, I don't know how to properly describe Panther...playing in a psychedelic dance band or something like that...how is playing something as "classical" as a violin in such a removed setting different for you?

Sara: Well, I've been playing music for a while, and I picked up the violin later.  And so most of my learning on that was just playing what I thought sounded good.  And so it's not real hard.  I really like the improv aspect.

FM: That's interesting that you say that, because last week I was interviewing a guy in DC who used to play with the Boston Pops, and now he sits in with tons of different folk and rock acts around the city, and he said the same thing.  He loves the experience of playing all these different types of music without such strict structures, that it's freeing for him.  Is that your experience as well?

Sara: Yeah, absolutely.  But not just violin, I've always approached music that way. Structure is freeing, too, in a sense, but ultimately I run toward the challenge of continually doing something different, whether you call that improv or whatever.

FM: What's specifically most challenging about playing with Panther?

Sara: Being on the road with them [Points at Charlie and Joe.  Everyone laughs].

FM: Well, I think that's the perfect conclusion.

###

Just a few very brief comments on the live show:  have you ever wondered what it would have been like at Royal Albert Hall in '66, when everyone is leaving the Dylan show talking about what a sellout he is and how much the show sucked...and to be one of the few people in the crowd who got it? That's sort of the feeling I got at the Panther show last week. The bar was small and dingy, mostly full of weatherbeaten pseudo-goth kids and nu-punkers.  There was one guy who had driven Virginia Tech, a dorm musician who dug Panther, but the rest of the crowd was either in one of the other bands or a friend of a friend of theirs.  Panther was 3rd on a 4 band bill, but by the time they made it through three tunes, the crowd had dwindled to myself, my Hokie friend and the record label rep from FDH who was supporting Digital Leather, the headliner.  

This is tragic and telling, because Panther's execution and stage presence were top notch.  Humara was a knob-twisting electric eel, running vocal loops in between shakedowns and guitar riffs while Kelly kept the fresh beats coming and Welker provided flashes of string runs that sounded somewhat strange yet patently intuitive.  The mix was good, the sound was good, the stage presence was phenomenal...with the exception of the crowd, this could have been one of the most entertaining shows of the summer.

Luckily, a supporting role on the present Ratatat tour should broaden their exposure, so perhaps bad bookings can be avoided in the future, but you'll definitely want to check these guys out before they get too huge, so you can say "I knew them when."