The Jersey City Independent"

Jersey City’s Tris McCall has always been a New Jersey partisan. But the 38-year-old musician has had a more complicated relationship with Jersey City.

When he moved here in October 2003 from Union City, McCall was drawn by the creative hub at 111 1st St., and he began chronicling his interactions with the city on his Tris McCall Report website. What at first was mostly a travelogue of sorts and a diary of arts events and people quickly turned into a voice for artists and their allies, who were engaged in an ultimately losing battle to preserve the freewheeling and vibrant space they’d created in the Powerhouse Arts District.

In 2005, after running lengthy candidate profiles of mayoral contenders and weighing in with endorsements, McCall stepped away from his reporting. “It didn’t peter out — I stopped it short a week after the day I got 10,000 hits,” he says. “I realized it had become something I didn’t like.”

Since then, McCall has kept busy with other projects — playing in bands like My Teenage Stride, releasing the 2006 album I’m Assuming You’re All in Bands, and working on a novel. Meanwhile, he’s settled into Jersey City, become a homeowner and put together the excellent new album, Let The Night Fall (see Jim Testa’s review here). We recently caught up with McCall to talk about his fourth full-length, Jersey pride, the state of modern-day Jersey City and — of course — a little political corruption.

You’ve been known as a Jersey-pride guy for some time, but this record takes it to the next level. It is a kind of map of New Jersey, from the Delaware Water Gap to Jersey City and many points in between. Tell us about the overall idea and general theme behind the album.

The last two records were grounded in a specific, deliberately-circumscribed time and place: Shootout at the Sugar Factory was set in Union City at the turn of the decade, and I’m Assuming You’re All in Bands was about Williamsburg in 2001-2002. So while they were based on my experiences, they were both best understood as historical fiction. Let The Night Fall is broadly autobiographical. The scope is wider, and I’ve attempted to be more forthright. I’ve put aside some of the smoke and mirrors I use to make the wizard more fearsome. Some of these stories are true: “You’re Dead After School” is a painfully accurate report of something that actually happened. I wanted to make an album that looked and sounded like my life, for better and for worse.

The songs on Let The Night Fall are about saying goodbye and letting go, and not always voluntarily. The main character in “The Ballad of Frank Vinieri” is forced to give up his public aspirations because his life doesn’t conform to that of a conventional politician. Never mind that he’s capable. He isn’t one of the boys, so the public sector and the democratic party aren’t for him. The narrator of “Mountainside” is attempting to be a good sport about somebody who has left small-town Jersey behind; “WFMU” is a similar story, only with a nastier edge. “Midnight” marks the twilight of a certain romanticized vision of Manhattan the emerald city — one that hasn’t been ratified by recent facts. In “The Throwaway,” I ask whether I’d be better off leaving New Jersey. Many of these songs were written at a time when I didn’t exactly feel welcome in my own hometown. Since I have always had a near-religious loyalty to the place where I’m from, you could look at Let The Night Fall as a chronicle of a crisis of faith.

This album comes three-plus years after your last — what have you been up to in between?

I spent 2006 writing a book, which is something I do not recommend doing. I spent the better part of 2007 trying to get the book published, and worrying about what it meant that I couldn’t get the book published. Which I absolutely, positively do not recommend doing. I would call this all the worst decision I’ve ever made, if I didn’t maintain in my heart of hearts an unshakable conviction that the book is good; considerably better than anything else I’ve ever written. That I feel that way — that I can’t stop feeling that way — only makes my inability to bring the book to an audience all the more frustrating.

Maybe all independent musicians ought to try writing a book just to see how good we’ve got it. People will listen to an independent record: it costs them nothing, and music is easy to consume. Nobody wants to download a ninety-thousand word story, and who can blame them? I did have an agent making the rounds for me, and I believe that he was thorough. For someone who is used to handing out CDs myself and scrupulously avoiding intermediaries, signing over agency to a representative was traumatic. Of course, sitting at home and wondering what the hell was going on was worse. It was with no small amount of relief that I returned to making records in 2008.

You’re a stubbornly un-trendy songwriter, and this album is no different — we get a lot of what we’ve come to expect from you, namely synth- and piano-driven offbeat pop and erudite lyrics. Musicially, what are the biggest influences on the record?

I decided very early that it was going to be a classic rock album, and that I was going to shoot the works. Since most of the songs were written on the piano, I used my favorite piano-rock records as models: Springsteen’s, as usual, but also Steely Dan, Genesis, Billy Joel, Elton John, Terry Allen’s Juarez.

“The Ballad of Frank Vinieri” was my umpteenth attempt to write something like “The Queen and the Soldier” (I’m still trying). The arrangement for “You’re Dead After School” is consciously imitative of Graham Parker — I psyched myself up before the basic tracking session by listening to “Protection.” “We Could Be the Killers” is my latest transparent Scott Miller rip-off.

Because I am not 19 years old, the bamboozle/emo-pop influence might not be so obvious. But I love that stuff. I think it would have been dishonest for me not to inscribe that affection on this record. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I believe I share much more with those kids than I do with the un-stubbornly trendy who make contemporary college rock — for one thing, I’m never shy about howling at the moon. I am strident and caustic and goofy, too. I foreground the first-person emotional content; I don’t try to put any distance between me and the listener. It’s probably more useful to compare my writing to Max Bemis’, or Ace Enders’, or Chris Conley’s, than to whatever is currently getting an 8.5 over at Pitchfork.

“First World, Third Rate” is a seven-plus minute ode, if that’s the right word, to fast food culture. Like you do with so many elements of pop culture, it seems like you are mocking and celebrating it at the same time — am I reading this right? What role do you see fast food joints and strip-malls playing in New Jersey’s cultural heritage?

I am constitutionally opposed to the idea of Jersey Kitsch; in fact, any attempt made to render the Turnpike cutesy or “weird” really gets my Irish up. There’s nothing charming about the strip-mall or the fast food restaurant; I see both as ugly products of a car culture that we show no signs of outgrowing. But they’re here and we’re here, so whatever they are, we are, too. I grew up in a straight automobile suburb. It was impossible to get anywhere without a car. In a landscape like that, the crummy strip-mall and the parking lot and the fast food joint are your home. And if it’s your home, you’d better find some value in it. You’d better defend it with both fists.

There is nothing glorious or noble about the inner ring of suburbs, but there is always something noble and glorious about home. I won’t pretend that the Jersey suburbs represent good planning or smart growth. But they’re mine, and if you come after them, I will come after you. The narrator of “First World, Third Rate” is under no illusions about the life he is leading on the highway strip. He’s been left behind and he knows it. But he’s chosen to find what value he can in who he is and where he’s from, and to hell with those who’d have him renounce his home for cool points. Or worse.

You’ve made some waves over the years for your political songs (the excellent “Robert Menendez Basta Ya!” for example), but there’s only one explicitly political song on this album. Tell us a little bit about the Frank Vinieri character — he’s entirely fictional, correct?

I could tell you there is no actual Frank Vinieri, but it might be better to say that there are many Frank Vinieris. There are hundreds of people who could be valuable participants in civic culture, but who are rejected by voters and community leaders alike because of some nonsense that has nothing to do with their organizational ability. They don’t dress right, or they don’t act right, or they’ve got the wrong connections, or they once insulted some ward heeler’s sister. Or they don’t subscribe to some current political orthodoxy. Or they insist that conventional wisdom is a whore. A Democratic Party is supposed to welcome everybody; that’s the whole point of it. It’s supposed to be polyglot. If it doesn’t have that, it doesn’t have anything.

I have been asked many times, so I want to be clear: Frank Vinieri is not a version of me. I do not share any of Frank’s talents. I wouldn’t have been able to bring 700 new voters to the Democratic rolls; I would have ended up playing XBox with the first voter I tried to sign up. I am disorganized and truculent; I have no political aspirations, and that is a very good thing for the polis. Frank Vinieri is a fun mask to wear for three and a half minutes at a rock show, but then the mask comes off, and I go back to being a cranky writer and an occasionally tuneful singer.

It’s interesting — in the song, you paint a very sympathetic picture of the disgraced politician. Of course, Vinieri was taken down by a personal flaw, not, say, political corruption. Do you see a difference between a public figure’s personal compulsions and whatever impulse may drive them to take bribes? To what extent are they different shades of the same character flaw?

Consider the context. The government continues to give the federal reserve license to print billions upon billions of dollars, which means they’re straight-up robbing everybody with a savings account. Currency inflation is considered imperative because our nation is insolvent, and maybe it is. Imperative, I mean. But they’re stealing from the poor, they have been for years and years, and the pace of theft is only accelerating.

The magnitude of the problem doesn’t excuse smaller instantiations of it. When Peter Cammarano takes $25,000 from Solomon Dwek, we should be upset. But we need to understand how deep the kleptocracy goes. Moving around money is what elected officials do. If they move money in a way that makes their constituents happy, they usually get to keep their jobs. Otherwise they find another line. Everybody loves a rainmaker, and the best rainmakers are invariably going to take liberties with the law. Yes, it’s a character flaw, but the entire American political system is built on that flaw. How is that system doing lately? Check our current account deficit with China. The answer is on the ledger.

Along those lines, what’s your take on the Jersey City corruption busts? You publicly endorsed Guy Catrillo, for example, in this May’s City Council election. Are you disappointed by his arrest and guilty plea?

It’s a good thing I have no influence, isn’t it? That’s about the last thing we needed in Ward E: our councilman taken away in handcuffs. Further reinforcement of the Jersey stereotype — all of our leaders are charismatic crooks. They love it over the river; it’s theater for them. They really think it’s cute and quaint. We’re a throwback to an earlier age where thieving politicians were unsophisticated enough to get caught.

Disappointment doesn’t really get at it, because I don’t have high expectations for any of these guys. Nobody in Jersey City public office strikes me as a pillar of virtue, and I am no pillar of virtue either, so perhaps I am well-represented. As an old reprobate (and a god-damned musician to boot), my sympathy automatically goes to the arrested. The pettier the crime — and this stuff was pretty petty and inept — the more sympathy I have. I hate to see anybody bumble off to jail. For years, I’d had nothing but bad things to say about Lou Manzo — but it still hurt to watch him in the paddywagon.

Mayor Healy sings on the final song, “Sunrise, Rte. 7,” a downright anthemic outro for the album. How did that come about, and what was the experience like?

I heard the mayor’s Christmas CD and I was impressed by his singing. I added him to the list of potential backing vocalists whose voices might complement my own proletarian croak. Still, I was hesitant: past experience has taught me that almost anything can be used as ammunition by an incumbent’s political opponents. There was practically no place to put him. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t ask him to sing on “The Ballad of Frank Vinieri.” “Sugar Nobody Wants” and “Midnight” could both be construed as glorifications of criminal activity. “We Could Be the Killers” and the title track are not-so-subtly anti-establishment; “Killers” also references every conspiracy theory under the sun. “You’re Dead After School” would have been way out of line; can you imagine me saying “OK, Mr. mayor, your next line is ‘My role models are either dead or in jail’”? I have no appetite for life imitating art, and I wasn’t looking to assist the scandal-mongers or bulletin-board cranks.

Finally I settled on “Sunrise”, which isn’t an innocuous song, but one that seemed safe enough. I inspected it from all angles, decided it was as airtight and anodyne as my writing ever gets, and brought it up to City Hall. I recorded the part in his office, which gave it a nice natural reverb, and then we ran it through the plates at Water Music. He’s part of the chorus now.

He isn’t the easiest person to get in touch with over the internet — I understand he has no email. Which is fine with me; I won’t do the social-networks, either. So I wrote to Bill Matsikoudis, Greg Brickey and Jen Morrill, and they helped me out. Once I got to City Hall, Mayor Healy was gracious as always. The actual recording took about 15 minutes, and it was on a lunch break, so don’t give me any guff about taxpayer time. We’re all allowed to enjoy ourselves.

You’ve said you got really burnt out, for lack of a better word, by Jersey City a few years back. But you ended up sticking around, albeit with a lower profile than in, say, 2004 or 2005. What’s your take on the city these days? Are you optimistic? Pessimistic? Agnostic?

After the last tenants left 111 1st St., I cast around for someplace to apply whatever civic energy I had left. When I didn’t find anything, it occurred to me that my days of close engagement with Downtown Jersey City were over. But as you guys know better than anybody, this city is more than just a Downtown; Ward E is probably the least interesting part of the city. Last year I decided that if I was going to run my mouth about Jersey City, I’d better know what the hell I was talking about. So I rode my bike on every street in town. I was neurotic about this: once I was done with a bike ride, I’d go home and mark off the streets I’d seen in green pen on my map. I tried to be more than just a tourist in the neighborhoods I visited. I didn’t loiter on street corners taking real-estate photos.

Exploring gave me the urge to share what I’d seen (and, more importantly, the way it made me feel). But I realized that uploading my reflections to the internet meant I’d be repeating all the mistakes I made with the Tris McCall Report. So instead, I did what I should have been doing all along: I wrote an album’s worth of songs about the experience. The bicycle album will be the followup to Let The Night Fall. I intend to record it next year.

The Jersey City experiment has reinforced a lesson that i thought I’d learned long before I moved here. My best bet for reaching people doesn’t involve browbeating readers on the web, or throwing the book at them, or indulging in multimedia projects in the hope of stumbling upon some undiscovered aesthetic alchemy. My best bet is to keep writing songs. People like songs. A song — even one sung by a singer as unspectacular as I am — always goes down smoother than a sermon. In song, you can get away with saying things that are too ridiculous, or too silly, or too ugly for other mediums to accommodate. In song, even a cantankerous cuss like me stands a chance of getting his story heard.

I’m glad you mentioned 111 1st. You mentioned in an interview with Jim Testa that the “the shadow of 111 falls very heavily” on Let The Night Fall. In fact, a photograph of 111 (by the very talented local photographer Edward Fausty) graces the cover of the album. You don’t sing explicitly about 111, however, on the record — so how did the arts center’s rise and fall impact this album? You’ve said the record is very personal; do you see the end of 111 as a personal turning point for you, at least in your relationship to the city?

With 111 gone, it’s definitely a different city. It isn’t a city I like as much. I don’t think I’m alone there.

I remember going to punk rock shows in that building way back in 1994. At that time, it really felt you were in the middle of nowhere, and it made perfect sense to have this mothership filled with creative people floating around in the netherworld. You could imagine you were on the kidnapped starship from Blows Against the Empire. You never knew what you’d find behind the next airlock. Eventually the empire built out to where the spaceship was floating, and we all know the rest.

Maybe it was because I was younger, but the vacant district seemed to be much bigger back then. Ah, hell, it wasn’t because I was younger. I remember breaking into the huge abandoned brownfield property west of the Golden Cicada to take photos. That lot is now home to Gull’s Cove and Liberty Harbor North. We’ve lost all the places where we can go to get away from the master plan. It changes my experience of the Downtown. It’s no longer a place where discovery comes easy. Everything’s mapped.

Your record release show is in NYC. Should Jersey feel slighted? When can we see you on this side of the river?

I don’t know, man, have you been to Ludlow Street lately? It’s Hoboken east. I’d wager that two out of every three people out on the street on the weekend has a Garden State driver’s license. That’s why you can’t get parking on the Lower East Side anymore, and why it takes two hours to get through the Holland Tunnel on a weekend night. You still can’t get Jersey people to Williamsburg, but it’s probably easier to bring a Hudson County crowd to Pianos than it is to get them to come to a random show in Jersey City. I hope. We’ll see.

I’ll do another Maxwell’s show soon. As for Jersey City, I’ll be back at the county court house on February 19. I’ll get my band over here when an opportunity presents itself. There’s already been talk of a “world tour of New Jersey” where we take Let The Night Fall to hipster centers all over the state. Don’t worry about me and the Jerz; we’re fine. New Jersey is going to have a tough time dodging me in 2010.

The record-release show for Let The Night Fall is tonight at Pianos in New York City. McCall is scheduled to go on at 9 pm. He’ll be giving out free CDs to those in attendance. For more, visit his website.

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