Stephen McBean. Photo by Bryan Parker.
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Stephen McBean is the central force behind pscyh rock outfits Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops. These bands, which have released records on stalwart indie label Jagjaguwar, have become a household name among psych rock aficionados, and the latter had the honors of closing down the Elevation Amphitheater on Psych Fest’s final night. Earlier in the day, we had a chance to talk with McBean about his musical processes, touring, and his most recent album. McBean may be one of the most relaxed and nonchalant interviewees I’ve had the pleasure of talking with. He grins easily, muttering his way up to the precipice of essential truths and then casually leaves the listener to decide for themselves whether there’s any righteousness in his words. These half-sentences and musings seem to rely on some cosmic commonality between all people. He’s on another wavelength, and if you get it, then it’s likely you are, too.
-Bryan Parker, Editor-in-Chief
The below interview with Pink Mountaintops’ Stephen McBean was conducted by Pop Press International writer Lukas Truckenbrod at Austin Psych Fest on Sunday, May 4. Truckenbrod’s words are in standard typeface, while McBean’s statements are in bold.
How’s your Psych Fest so far?
It’s been a lot of partying.
Yeah, going hard this weekend?
I always go hard. [laughs] Unfortunately.
I want to talk about tone. Gear. What kind of role does tone play in trying to relay your message?
Tone’s good. My favorite story about tone is uh, Chet Atkins story where he’s, uh, in the studio and he lays down something sick, you know he’s Chet Atkins, and the engineer goes, ‘Whoa, that’s a great sounding guitar.’ And then he lays it down on the couch or the chair or wherever and he goes, ‘how does it sounds now?” [laughs] But yeah, I don’t know, I always go through, I go through…I go back and forth on gear things. I’ll go through bits where I like I get deep into it and study it and get obsessed with it and then also get like, you play how you play and it’s gonna kinda sound like you whether it’s true bypass or all military wiring, you know? I mean certain things are nice. Like playing through old amps is the best. Old guitars. Right now I’m just playing through a Squire Telecaster and it’s a early 80s one. Sounds great.
Is that when they made them in Japan?
What about some non-musical influences. Landscape or the weather, social climate?
Weather’s big, friends, love-life, uh, they’re all, they all influence. That’s the thing about playing live. Everyone that’s there, you know, the band and what happened to them that day’s gonna affect their performance and there’s also the audience. Some people could’ve had great days, some people could have had terrible days and there’s the way everyone gets mashed up together kind of makes the chemistry of what’s gonna happen that night, you know? And sometimes when you’ve had the worst day going to see some live music is a good way to switch your heart around. I don’t know, everything. It’s like being alive—it all just, it all runs through you, in some ways.
So you don’t necessarily sit down and write a song about something or someone?
There’s like loose things. Usually if I try to write topical, like on a specific topic, I’m not really good at that. Other people are really good at that, but usually like verse to verse there’ll be like different things and sometimes I don’t know what I’m talking about till years later when I’m singing it.
Figure it out later?
Just try not to fight it. Soon as you start fighting it you’re kinda bound to fail, unless you’re Leonard Cohen or someone who can like spend three years writing a tower of song, which is…
Who have you enjoyed seeing this weekend?
I really dug Moon Duo, Acid Mothers Temple were really great, the river, the projections, uh, I missed a bunch, like I missed a bunch of things I wish I had seen like Shannon and the Clams. I’m gonna go see uh, what’s his name? Mikal?
Mikal Cronin?
Yeah I’m gonna go check him out. Um, I really liked yuh…what are they called…something orchestra?
Unknown Mortal Orchestra?
They were great last night. There were some Horrors songs that were cool. It’s hard cause, it’s like, so many friends and stuff. So you’re like running around like, but it’s a cool festival that way, like, usually festivals, there’s not a lot I want to see, but stuff like, ATP and stuff that are usually full of great bands, great people.
Alright, I wanna talk about a recent move to LA. This is your first record, Get Back was your first one in LA?
Mhm. I mean I guess I was kinda living there when we made Wilderness Heart.
But just going back and forth from Vancouver then.
LA’s kind of, you know, the epitome of superficiality—
Parts of it are.
Ok, so how do you stay honest?
At first you think that cause LA’s a really big city, like landmass-wise, so when I would go there before, I would go to Amoeba, and then I would walk around like, Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset Strip. I wouldn’t even know where to go, so then I’d be kinda like, “this place kinda sucks.” And I kinda moved there by accident just cause I was like, “oh I could move there,” but the more you learned to know… There’s the same elements of that in Vancouver but, I just don’t go there. I’m sure there’s like strips that you’re like, you know what I mean? You just don’t go cause it’s…but…it’s a pretty magical city, I mean it’s got the ocean, it’s got the mountains, the desert all around, it’s got like a cool history with old buildings, old bars, venues, recording studios that most, a lot of it is still intact, so you can go to like, cool little old diners or bars where you know like, I don’t know, maybe the Rat Pack would drink or something, I don’t know, that kind of thing that’s cool.
So there’s honesty in the history?
Yeah, I mean it’s like that’s the thing, I think it’s kind of a weird town. It’s like you can kind of go there and like kind of invent your own history if you want to. But it’s also like, you know the music scene there is, you know the history is amazing. There’s like the 60s stuff and then the early hardcore and all that. And then skateboarding and all that. Backyard pools and…so when I was a teenager that was like, you know, adolescence, Black Flag, and skating—that was kind of the dream.
Was that 1987 for you?
[laughing] That was. Maybe a little Slayer in there too. They were from there as well.
So you go hard all the time, how do you stay fresh, creatively? How do you stay motivated?
I feel like now I don’t have any choice. I don’t know it’s weird, it’s like after a while you’re just, I’m not complaining but it’s like, I played my first show a long, long, long time ago and I’ve been, I mean, touring with this band and Black Mountain for ten years and before that there was another ten or eleven years of touring bands as well, different bands. And we’d come, roll through here and you know play Emo’s, sleep at the rest stop. But after a while you’re just, “ah…uhh…ah.” It’s cool though.
Do you write on the road?
I write a little bit, I try to think of things and I usually figure that if they’re like a decent enough idea I’ll remember it and if it’s a bad idea I’ll forget it, hopefully [laughs].
If it’s good enough it’ll stick.
The new record seems like it’s really tried to embody a rock and roll spirit, kind of shed all pretenses and just be a rock record. Just raw, visceral. What is the true rock and roll spirit and how do you get it?
I think just, generally, you’re playing with friends and you’re not trying too hard. I mean the reason that I think the new record is, I mean the most rock and roll one yet is cause those songs. Some of them were acoustic songs that I played for, you know, some of them were years old, some are new, but I just think it’s more like the players I’m playing with this time. Like having Joe Cardamone produce it and stuff—it just kind of happened that way. Dan[iel Allaire] from [Brian Jonestown Massacre] played drums on it, and Gregg Foreman, and Steve Kille from Dead Meadow, and so for all of them it’s like they only heard the songs the night before we recorded them, so to them it was all fresh. And that kind of maybe kicked them up a notch and the fact that Joe is the singer for Icarus Line. He was really good at being like, “nah it’s done,” you know? I don’t know, playing with friends and kind of that same thing with rock and roll or being heavy it’s just all, it’s just Johnny Thunder with an acoustic is rock and roll. Karen Dalton singing is just heavy. It’s as heavy as anything. Like, Billie Holliday singing “Strange Fruit” is like as heavy as the Melvins, or more heavy actually.
So it’s about the soul and not necessarily the sound? And that comes from maybe a serendipitous moment between people?
Yeah. And I guess vulnerability and taking a chance and stuff. A lot of times it’s just easy to be like, “eh.” But yeah, trust, always trust your gut, which is hard to do, you know, and not to turn into a pompous asshole when someone likes your band. [laughs]
It’s hard to do. Get out on a limb and trust yourself.
And be a music lover. I mean, people always say, “oh, there’s [nothing] new,” I guess, yeah people mine the past, but there is just as many good bands now than before, probably more, but now there’s so many, that it’s…
Hard to pick through?
Yeah, it’s just you know, there’s different, there’s a million different subdivisions of black metal that I can’t keep up on.
People are talking a lot about the influences you have on the new record, New Wave, Classic Rock, some Crazy Horse…
Crazy Horse, yeah.
Are you getting as much influence from the new stuff as you are from the old stuff?
Yeah, well people like Joe, his band [Icarus Line]. And, yeah. Angel Olsen, I really love her, she’s great. Marissa Nadler; her new record’s great. Those are things that are like, heavy. But, not necessarily heavy the way Sunn’s heavy, but…
Who’s your favorite guitar player right now?
Mine? Mine right now? Um….Gregg Foreman. I get to share a stage with him too. He’s keeping rock and roll alive with his hair and his Pete Townsend jumps [laughs].
Alright I got one more. Is Pink Mountaintops a reference to the female anatomy?
Yes. [laughs]
