ITV - ZACK MEXICO - KEYS AND CHORDS

‘Zack Mexico’ – “a ferocious psychedelic pop/indie rock band” according to their official website - hails from North Carolina in the United States, and is currently touring Europe as a supporting act for Future Islands. They contacted Keys and Chords, and asked if we were interested in conducting an interview. Sure, why not? The day after their show in the Ancienne Belgique (AB) in Brussels, we take a seat in a cafe on the corner, next to the venue. The two band members try to order coffee and water, but – to our surprise – the lady behind the counter doesn’t speak a word of English. I translate the order to French, and we sit down to talk

Julian: ‘So, guys, how did yesterday’s gig go?’

Joshua ‘Marty’ Martier: ‘Good, it was great. Kind of a slow start to the night, but by the end of the show, there was a really good energy. Beautiful venue.’

Jamie Brumbeloe: ‘The venue is amazing.’

Julian: ‘First time in the AB? First time in Belgium?’

Marty: ‘First time in Europe, even!’

Jamie: ‘We’re really lucky to be able to tour with Future Islands. They’re letting us do this thing, and they’re opening a lot of doors for us.’

Julian: ‘So you’re coming back?’

Both: ‘Oh yeah, we want to.’

Julian: ‘Did the crowd like it? Belgian audiences tend to be a little reserved, standoffish.’

Jamie: ‘Compared to American audiences, yeah, they seemed a little reserved, but you could tell they were enjoying it. They don’t know us, they’re there for Future Islands, you can see them trying to figure out who we are in their brain, but by the end of the show, they’re into it. We think it’s good that there are no expectations. If you can convert them, or trick ‘em into liking you …’

Julian: ‘Then they’ll remember you. ‘I was there’. There’s a story going ‘round of Belgian fans seeing the first pre-‘Nevermind’ Nirvana gig in De Vooruit (a famous venue in Ghent). Some are just lying and saying they were there. If everyone who claims this was actually there, Nirvana would have filled three stadiums that day.
I listened to your Bandcamp songs. Excellent ditties, and quite long. Seven, eight minute songs. Is that a conscious choice to have big, grand anthems?’

Jamie: ‘I don’t know if it’s a conscious choice. Back when we started playing gigs in our hometown, the places that we played demanded three-hour sets. We just started extending the songs, to fill the evening. I think we all like long songs. It’s fun to continue building and building.’

Julian: ‘It’s quite uncommon to get three hours when you’re just starting out. Normally, you get half an hour to do your thing.’

Jamie: ‘Yeah, but we live in a touristy town, a beach community, so, it’s a lot of bars. Paid gigs, even if you’re starting out. They want you to play a full-night’s worth of entertainment.’

Marty: ‘Our songs need some time. I like that about Zack Mexico.’

Jamie: ‘Our songs evolve and change. It can be a trip.’

Marty: ‘A psychedelic rock sound. It will take you on a ride.’

Julian: ‘I like it, when an album can be one big trip, like a concept album. ‘The Wall’, or ‘American Idiot’, or ‘Tommy’. Full stories.
Your song, ‘Call Me Back’, starts with a female voice saying ‘Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system (…) at the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press 1 for more options’. Is this something you guys recorded specifically for the album?’

Jamie: ‘It’s our bass player Stephen, it’s his actual phone. If you call the number, it says ‘252 etc. is not available’. It’s a stock answer. He never recorded an actual message. So if anybody wants to call Stephen, he’s single and ready to mingle.’

Marty: ‘His number is on the album.’

Julian: ‘I’ll inform our readers. I like the title of your album, ‘Get Rich and Live Forever’. So Peter Pan-esque, so very Lost Boyish.’

Jamie: ‘It’s the follow-up to ‘Run Out of Money and Die’. They’re sister albums.’

Julian: ‘‘Time to Move’ may be the best song, to me. It’s really quite excellent, with a noisy bridge Lou Reed would have loved.’

Jamie: ‘I love that recording, we don’t play it live all that much. It’s hard to say how it came about. Our lead singer and guitar player, John, writes a lot of the songs. He’ll make a demo in his bedroom, then brings it to us, it evolves, it changes, gets longer, different parts. But I don’t really remember any details (laughs)’

Julian: ‘Is it a group effort?’

Jamie: ‘John is the main driving force. He’s still sleeping on the tour bus now (laughs). He writes the lyrics and the chord progressions, and everybody else helps flesh it out. As we play, we’ll just play it over and over, and it will evolve. People have ideas, and we’ll try something out. What works? What doesn’t? Every song is different, too. There are songs where John shows us the demo, and we’ll all agree ‘That’s a perfect song, let’s play it just like that’.’

Julian: ‘So, there’s a group democracy?’

Marty: ‘Six people in the band, and all can and will contribute.’

Jamie: ‘I play guitar.’

Marty: ‘I play drums (points to foot in cast) and fractured my knee on the first night of the tour, in Lithuania. Quite stupid. We went out to a strip club, but the strippers weren’t dancing. So I got up, danced on the pole, tried something too acrobatic, and, well …’

Julian: ‘Something to tell the grandchildren: ‘A Lithuanian strip club’. Some people won’t even know what or where Lithuania is. You guys have been dancing in a strip club over there!’

Marty: ‘We’re lucky we have two drummers, because my left leg is pretty useless. I still play, with my hi-hats closed. I’m still pretty functional.’

Jamie: ‘Luckily, it wasn’t your right leg.’

Julian: ‘Well, at least something has got to go Spinal Tap on the tour.’

Marty: ‘Exactly, haha! Spinal Tap, absolutely!’

Julian: ‘If you ask any European about ‘North Carolina’, there’s not an awful lot of things that spring to mind. The only thing I know, is the big jazz heritage. John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone and others are all from North Carolina.’

Jamie: ‘That’s good. Most people that live in North Carolina don’t even know that.’

Julian: ‘You should be proud. North Carolina is the birthplace of modern jazz. John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’, a classic.’

Jamie: ‘A lot of those guys moved, of course, and subsequently became jazz musicians. I’m glad you think of jazz, I was afraid you were going to mention ‘racism’ or ‘guns’. North Carolina is in the south, after all.’

Julian: ‘No stereotypes here.’

Jamie: ‘Good. We’ll take the jazz.’

Julian: ‘Do you guys feel influenced by the jazz from North Carolina?’

Jamie: ‘Yeah, I love jazz. If I’m at home chilling, there’ll be jazz playing. I got all them records. Actually, Marty’s dad plays in an amazing jazz band.’

Marty: ‘One of our mentors on guitar is a jazz guitarist. Our foundation is definitely jazz.’

Jamie: ‘For me, jazz is just a free, no-rules type thing. You can play whatever you want. Psychedelic rock can be like jazz sometimes. You can freak out, and play whatever. Absolutely. Really cool. Marty’s dad and friends play in [ARTIST’S PLACE/ARCTIC PLACE?] a tiny, little shack, a burger spot, every Monday in North Carolina. World class jazz, every single time. It’s the place to be, if you’re ever in the neighborhood.
Other than that, I don’t have the feeling it’s really that big in North Carolina anymore.’

Marty: ‘The scene isn’t there anymore. I feel like every band has the sound of where you come from. There’s a North Carolina sound, outside of jazz. And ever more specific, Outer Banks, where we live, is a small fishing community. I don’t know how to describe it, but where you’re coming from is definitely an influence on how you sound. There’s an ‘Outer Banks Sound’, original music.’

Julian: ‘Outer Banks?’

Jamie: ‘It’s a barrier island. A skinny stretch of sand. Two miles wide, and a hundred miles long. It’s a weird place.’

Julian: ‘Fertile ground for musicians?’

Jamie: ‘I guess for us, it was (laughs). It’s where the Wright brothers flew their first plane.’

Marty: ‘Sand dunes.’

Julian: ‘They never told me that in elementary school. Great trivia. The original meaning of the word ‘jazz’ is ‘nonsense’. ‘Stop with that jazz!’ meant something along the lines of ‘Stop with that racket!’. My own grandfather didn’t like jazz at all, and every musical genre he disliked, he just called it ‘jazz’. It was all ‘jazz’ to him. He used to call U2 ‘those jazz men from Ireland’. And when he taped Live Aid for my dad, he just called the tapes ‘Jazz #1’, ‘Jazz #2’ etc.’

Jamie: ‘Ha, well, if you put it that way, we ARE a jazz band. A lot of noise.’

Julian: ‘It’s a compliment to you guys that you can’t really pinpoint which genre you’re exactly playing. Even your website mentions at least four genres.’

Jamie: ‘We like to make a lot of our songs as different as possible. That’s one thing I like about our set. It’s a rollercoaster that goes up and down, with fast and slow songs. Every single song is very different. It’s interesting for us, because we don’t get bored.’

Marty: ‘I think everyone likes a lot of different kinds of music, and that comes through in the sound. I guess when you’re making music, you don’t think too much about that. You’re going to write all sorts of crazy shit if you listen to a lot of stuff. A lot of different influences, and lot of people making music together.’

Jamie: ‘Six people, six opinions, we all listen to different music. Also the same music, but we always go back to our own thing.’

Marty: ‘We put out a record called ‘The Collective’. You can only get it online. Each member wrote a song, and recorded it by themselves from the ground up. No one heard it before we brought them all together, so, I feel like that’s a fun record to listen to.’

Jamie: ‘Every single song is so different. It’s everybody that’s ever played in Zack Mexico, so it’s twelve people.’

Marty: ‘People have come in and out.’

Jamie: ‘Some only played one show with us, and it evolved from there.’

Julian: ‘Like a brotherhood of musicians.’

Jamie: ‘Yeah!’

Marty: ‘Yes, it is. It’s definitely an open door policy.’

Julian: ‘So, say, if there was a Belgian musician that said ‘I want to join you guys for just a single concert’, that could be a possibility?’

Jamie: ‘Haha!’

Marty: ‘We were in Estonia, and we went to a little bar, and I ended up meeting two guys. One of them was an opera singer, and he was breaking out into a song in the bar. I said to him: ‘Dude, you gotta come and sing with us tomorrow night’, and I put him on the list. I don’t think he came. But, yeah, if somebody actually made an effort, they could climb on the stage.’

Julian: ‘Belgium is very influenced by America. My favorite movie, musician and comic strip are all American. How does that work the other way around? Have you guys ever been influenced by anything European while growing up?’

Marty: ‘Absolutely. Waffles. People know about Belgian waffles. Friends want us to bring chocolate.’

Jamie: ‘I’m not a huge fan of Belgian beer. The spices are too strong for me.’

Julian: ‘Fries are Belgian as well.’

Jamie: ‘What else?’

Marty: ‘Werner Herzog is one of my favorite directors.’

Jamie: ‘Alejandro Jodorowsky. British invasion stuff, too.’

Marty: ‘You can’t really escape that.’

Jamie: ‘I like European films, foreign films.’

Marty: ‘But Belgian specifically?’

Jamie: ‘I guess not.’

Julian: ‘The Smurfs, perhaps?’

Jamie: ‘The Smurfs are Belgian?’

Marty: ‘What?! That’s awesome!’

Julian: ‘Even in this street, where the AB is situated, there’s three comic stores. Belgian comics are world famous. The saxophone’s Belgian, too. Lisa Simpson plays a Belgian instrument.’

Jamie: ‘All American culture is a mixture. It goes back and forth. Things that are popular in America become popular in Europe, and vice versa. In America, we have the idea of Europeans being fashionable and cultured.’

Julian: ‘American culture is everywhere. Nine out of ten movies we watch, are American. We’re quite lucky: we don’t dub our movies, so we’ll always hear the American or British voices.’

Marty: ‘I can’t watch a dubbed movie.’

Jamie: ‘I’d rather have subtitles. Unless it’s an older Japanese movie, those are quite funny when they’re dubbed. You learned English by watching movies, right? I wish we had that in the US. I learned Spanish, but not really. I can communicate, but I can’t have a conversation.’

Julian: ‘In several places, for example Miami, it’s becoming the de facto language.’

Jamie: ‘In North Carolina, too.’

Marty: ‘It’s everywhere in the States.’

Jamie: ‘It’s big.’

Marty: ‘We should be forced to learn it.’

Jamie: ‘I wish it was more common for people to learn it.’

Marty: ‘Traveling through Europe, I always feel a sort of guilt about it. I only know fucking English, and everybody else speaks five different languages.’

Julian: ‘When I go to Italy, I always feel like a douche. ‘Why don’t I speak Italian?’. Yeah, well, you guys don’t have to apologize.’

Jamie: ‘It’s all fascinating to me.’

Julian: ‘You guys ever seen the movie ‘Training Day’? ‘How’s your espagnol?’ …’

Marty: ‘Yeah, haha!’

Jamie: ‘Great, so over the top.’

Marty: ‘Denzel’s awesome.’

Julian: ‘You guys have a song called ‘O’Mae’. That’s Irish-inspired?’

Jamie: ‘No, I think (pause) we just wrote it like that because we thought it was cool. Haha! There’s no deeper meaning.’

Julian: ‘Reminds me of The Who’s ‘Baba O’Riley’.’

Jamie: ‘Yeah, maybe it’s a subconscious homage to that.’

Julian: ‘There’s a certain atmosphere in ‘O’Mae’, a certain desolation, desperation even. A creepy, unpleasant atmosphere.’

Jamie: ‘I like that song, it’s really beautiful, we didn’t play it yesterday. We only played the rock songs. John’s lyrics on that song are pretty moving. The whole record has quite the atmosphere. It’s a more emotional record compared to the previous ones. The songs are slower, and more profound.’

Julian: ‘So, what’s next for you guys, after this European tour?’

Jamie: ‘That’s the big question. We want to get back in the studio, and start doing a new record. It’s been a couple of years since we put out ‘Get Rich and Live Forever’. We just gotta keep the ball rolling, we’re always trying to book shows.’

Julian: ‘You guys still have straight jobs?’

Marty: ‘We’re all musicians, we all play in different bands, offshoots of Zack Mexico.’

Jamie: ‘We try to make as much money as we can. I still work part-time in a restaurant, because it’s consistent. When you’re at home, it’s nice to have something to do. I like to have a job. In a weird way, it gets me out of the house.’

Marty: ‘Right.’

Julian: ‘You could literally spend five years just touring every town in America.’

Jamie: ‘Oh my god, dude, my wife and I drove across the country on our honeymoon, we were driving for a month and a half, and we didn’t even make it to California.’

Julian: ‘Do you know how many states you’ve been to?’

Jamie: ‘Maybe 25? I’ve seen all the East Coast states.’

Julian: ‘Yasmine Schillebeeckx, a famous Belgian author, was born in America, and she wants to visit all 50 states before she reaches a certain age. She has set that as a personal goal post.’

Marty: ‘I’ve driven across the country a few times. I’ve seen almost all of them.’

Julian: ‘And the best one is still North Carolina?’

Jamie: ‘It’s pretty good.’

Marty: ‘You got the ocean and the mountains.’

Jamie: ‘I like North Carolina a lot. Right now, the political environment is not that great.’

Julian: ‘Big Trump supporters in North Carolina?’

Jamie: ‘Yeah.’

Marty: ‘It’s hard to believe it, but: yeah.’

Jamie: ‘A lot of, we call ‘em, ‘rednecks’, you know.’

Julian: ‘Of course, I know that term.’

Jamie: ‘But there’s also a lot of really amazing people. My family’s from North Carolina. And there’s an awesome music scene in Asheville, in the mountains. The Moog synthesizer factory is there.’

Julian: ‘No, really, the legendary Moog synthesizer?’

Jamie: ‘Bluegrass music, too. Banjo music.’

Julian: ‘‘Dueling Banjos’ from ‘Deliverance’ is one of my favorite songs.’

Jamie: ‘A lot of movies were filmed in Wilmington, NC, because it was cheaper, but now the governor fucked it all up. Now it’s impossible to film there. David Lynch shot a lot in North Carolina.’

Julian: ‘My father is a big fan of America, and he believes he was born in the Bayou, or somewhere in New Orleans, in some other life. Some sort of reincarnation. He says he always feels a connection whenever he’s watching ‘Deliverance’.’

Marty: ‘He might be right, you never know.’

Julian: ‘So, final question. You guys are called ‘Zack Mexico’. Do you guys know what ‘Zack’ means in Dutch?’

Jamie: ‘Uh, no.’

Julian: ‘It has two meanings. One is not offensive.’

Marty: ‘Okay. Haha!’

Julian: ‘So, a ‘zak’ - without the c, same pronunciation - is a ‘bag’, like a shopping bag. And then, if you want to insult someone, you can call him a ‘zak’. Which is like a prick, a doofus, an idiot. ‘You’re suck a zak!’.’

Jamie: ‘‘You’re such a zak’? Hahaha!’

Marty: ‘Haha!’

Julian: ‘Next time, you should just call a Belgian guy ‘A Mexican Zak’, and they’ll love it.’

Marty: ‘Cool, haha!’

Jamie: ‘That’s funny.’

Julian: ‘Where does the name ‘Zack Mexico’ come from?’

Jamie: ‘‘Zack’ is a pretty common name in America. Basically, the story goes like this. (laughs) It’s pretty dumb. Michael Vick is an American football player. He’s a pretty bad person that has had a lot of different scandals. In one of the scandals, he would have sex with prostitutes in hotels, and he would check into the hotels under the name ‘Ron Mexico’. So when we were trying to come up with a band name, we thought of a friend of ours who lost his virginity to a stripper. Somehow, everybody started calling him ‘Ron Mexico’. We decided to settle on ‘Ron Mexico’ as a band name, but ‘Zack Mexico’ was a better choice. A total joke, and nobody thought it was going to last, but it stuck. It kept coming up in our heads. We used to be called ‘Camel Dinosaur’. That was John’s solo stuff.’

Julian: ‘When I hear the name ‘Zack’, I always think of ‘Zac Hanson’. And there’s also the touching, emotionally draining, superlative documentary ‘Dear Zachary’. It demands to be seen.’

Jamie: ‘Zac(k) or Zachary is a pretty common name. We have a lot of friends called Zack in our age group.’

Julian: ‘Great. I want to thank you guys for your time.’

Jamie: ‘Thank you, man.’

Marty: ‘Thanks for doing this.’

Julian: ‘I wish you a lot of continued success.’

INTERVIEW WITH...

“Our set is a rollercoaster that goes up and down, with fast and slow songs.”