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| Mikal Cronin's Self Titled Album |
I hadn't heard of Mikal Cronin until he released his self-titled solo album on Trouble In Mind this last year. It got a lot of great reviews from all kinds of websites and music journalism and he played a bunch of shows with Ty Segall, including one at the Duke Coffeehouse. His music combines surf-rock, melodic pop, and lo-fi garage into some kicking tunage that you cannot help but love. Simply put, it's rooted in good feelings and hip-shaking rock n' roll.
In 2011, aside from his self-titled album, he put out a 7" on Goner featuring "Tide" on the A-side. It was a single with longer songs, but with that same hooky melody that Cronin fans look to. In 2009, he released Reverse Shark Attack, an experimental album-like-thing with Ty Segall that featured a more than 10 minute song with a b-side that had a Pink Floyd cover on it. Cronin talks about the upcoming reissue later in the interview. He also put out an LP with his band The Moonhearts on Tic Tac Totally that is totally fuzzed out glory.
I basically loved his album and thought ("what the hell?") let's interview him. Turned out to be a great move because we had a great conversation including about how we were both from the same area in California (I've since moved all over the country). But he was a very personable and fun guy who really had a passion for the friends that he and his friends were making. He's working on the new Ty Segall Band LP that's coming out next month and his own solo LP and other projects, lending me to believe that he's really a genius about this whole music thing.
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| Mikal Cronin With Buddy Ty Segall |
His bandcamp website can be found HERE
But he talks about it way better than I do, so without further ado...MIKAL CRONIN!
Jordan: So, how do
you know Ty Segall? Have you all been
buddies for a while?
Mikal: Yeah, we grew
up together. We went to high school
together and started hanging out then and played in our first band together in
High School. I guess it was then that we
became very good friends. So it’s been
many years that we’ve been playing music together and hanging out.
Jordan: What was your
first band like?
Mikal: It’s kind of
funny. Ty played drums and sang. Our buddy Coleman played bass and sung and I
played saxophone. It was what we were
really into back in 2002-2003. Dance
punk kind of stuff. Really dancy beats
with keyboards. It was really
silly. It was called “The Love This” and
it was noisy at points with dance beats and ultimately some somewhat catchy
songs. We just played house parties,
basically: we didn’t play out of town.
It was fun.
Jordan: Did you guys
end up recording or releasing anything under that name?
Mikal: We recorded a
little bit by ourselves and handed them out as burnt CD’s but never got past
that point. Listening back to the
recordings in many years is weird. They’re
pretty bad recording (laughs). They don’t
sound good. But it’s funny looking back
to where you started.
Jordan: What happened
when you all broke off? It seems like
you and Ty make different-sounding music.
Mikal: I don’t know,
it just came with time and a musical taste change. Even Ty’s stuff started sounding more punk
with more noise and now he’s focusing on more songwriter stuff. Moonhearts is definitely one style of music
rather than my solo stuff. I guess it
came organically in terms of what I was listening to music-wise. I began to focus more on songwriting and
melody rather than volume explosion on my solo record. I still love loud sloppy punk bands and still
play with them, but with my solo music, I was obsessed with making it as
personal and honest as I can and that’s the form it took. That’s where my headspace was when I was
recording. It’s still where my head is.
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| Mikal Cronin Playing The Music |
Jordan: So do you
still record stuff and play with Moonhearts?
Do you have anything coming out?
Mikal: Since we’ve
started the band we’ve all lived in different cities, even through college and
other things. Since very recently, we
all started living in San Francisco, as of a couple months ago. We just started playing again and recording
new songs. We just started playing new
shows again. It took a pretty long
hiatus, but we’re working on stuff. I don’t know when we’ll release something
but we’re talking about writing a new record together. It’ll be fun.
Jordan: I was
recently lucky enough to get my hands on a copy and I really liked it, but I
hadn’t heard Moonhearts before I heard your solo stuff so I wasn’t expecting
something as fuzzed out and punky.
Mikal: (Laughs) It was definitely the direction we decided to
take with that band. More Ramones style
than, I don’t know, Beatles style.
Jordan: Do you have
something you’re more focused on right now?
Mikal: I’ve
definitely been more focused on solo stuff lately. I’m writing a new record right now. That’s
where my focus has been. Most of my time
has been touring with Ty’s band for the last 6 months or so, maybe even
longer. Spending a lot of time on the
road with Ty’s band and a little less with mine, but as far as when I go home
and start writing songs, I’m focused on my own solo stuff.
Jordan: What’s your
writing process like for the solo stuff?
Mikal: It’s really
boring and cliché. I’m sitting alone in
my room with an acoustic guitar and plugging through it. I always record demos of everything on my
computer the easiest way I can, which is Garageband and end up writing the
barebones. From there I orchestrate for
more instruments and end up trying everything.
From there, I just start figuring out what works.
Jordan: Your
self-titled LP was produced by Ty, wasn’t it?
Is that a staple or what happens?
Mikal: That situation
with me and Ty came through a really long working musical relationship. I went and recorded at the same studio that
Moonhearts used, which happened to be the same one that Ty recorded his last
handful of records at. I was living at
San Francisco at the time and asked Ty for some help because we were on the
same page musically and I wanted to make it sound as good as possible and he
was really stoked to help out. He didn’t
have a classic producer’s role of a heavy hand, but he was a good advisor and a
friend to ask if I thought something was or wasn’t working. He was really helpful, so I just decided to
give producer’s credit since he was hanging out and helping me record. He played a lot of the drums while I was
recording.
Jordan: How do you
end up deciding or choosing which labels to put records out on?
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| Tide 7" Cover |
Mikal: Well, Trouble
In Mind happened because Bill and Lisa Roe, who run that label, had been good
friends of mine and the Moonhearts.
During the first Moonhearts tour, we stayed at their house and we ended
up seeing them every time we came through Chicago. They’re awesome and great people. One of the last times before I recorded my
self-titled LP, I told Bill and he was really excited and basically offered to
put it out before I even recorded anything.
They’re just good friends and really supportive. I was even sending demos to them while
writing and they gave me input.
Eventually they released it and I’m really grateful because they did
such a good job. Even promoting it and
getting it out to people. With my “Tide”
7” on Goner, it was a similar thing that happened after touring and knowing the
guys from Goner. I think I actually
asked if they wanted to release the single that I had just recorded. (Laughs).
It was a long-shot, just like “would you maybe want to release this?” and
they said “sure.” So it’s been a lot of
happenstance of who I meet and who wants to work with me. Both of those labels are great.
Jordan: So what
differentiates and influences each type of music that you play?
Mikal: Moonhearts
pretty much found our niche of what we wanted to do. We were obsessed with early garage and punk
music, just loud blown-out stuff. For my
solo stuff, I was listening to a lot of the Beatles and Del Shannon, even David
Bowie: more on the pop side of the spectrum and that’s where my head was
at. When I wrote songs, I tried to focus
on the melody with interesting chord changes, you know, like pop music. Something like the Ty Segall band project
comes from a bunch of places. Ty wrote
the majority of it, but we all worked on it together. It’s a live recording of the whole band and
it sounds like 70’s stoner metal, well, not metal, but rock. It’s like longer songs that are a lot heavier
and slower. We were listening to a lot
of Hawkwind and Black Sabbath and stuff like that. We all listen to very different styles of
music all the time and sometimes it’s more appropriate to apply it to a certain
project.
Jordan: Where did you
record the Ty Segall band album, since you said it was live?
Mikal: We recorded it
in Sacramento at the Hangar. That’s the
name of the studio, with Chris Woodhouse who records a lot of Thee Oh Sees
stuff and he was from the band the Mayors.
That studio is great. It’s
beautiful, it’s legit, it’s great. It’s
got a bunch of vintage equipment.
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| Oh My God, Would You Look At That Cleft Chin? |
Jordan: I’ve never been
to San Francisco, but it seems like there’s this magical collaborative aspect
to the scene there. Could you describe it
to an outsider, or at least how you all get to know each other?
Mikal: I’m new to
it. I just moved up to San Francisco last
summer, but I can say that it’s a small city geographically and a lot of people
play music. It’s a healthy
environment. Everyone seems willing to
help everyone else. There’s no negative
competition. People meet through playing
local shows and become aware of what everyone else is doing. It seems like an anomaly sometimes compared
to somewhere like Los Angeles and New York.
There’s just a lack of negative competition with the bands we play
with. I’m still new to it, but that’s
the sense that I’ve gotten.
Jordan: So where all
have you been living and playing since 2002 and has the area impacted your
sound at the time?
Mikal: I think
so. We grew up in Laguna Beach, which is
a small town in Orange County, and there wasn’t any kind of music scene at
all. That place was really
isolated. If we wanted to go to a show,
we would have to drive an hour North to Los Angeles just to see music. You could say that a lot of our surf elements
in our music came from growing up in a beach town where everyone surfed but it
seems like the group of people I met and still play music with got together in
a strangely cosmic way. Almost like we
found each other in a small community without much music going on and we had
similar ideas with what we wanted to do with music. It’s strange.
Hard to say what influences the music we’re playing except for our
friendship and mutual love of the music we heard from other places.
Jordan: Wait, so do
you surf?
Mikal: I did when I
was a kid. I kind of stopped. But I was definitely a beach kid when I was
young. When I was like 10 I
boogie-boarded a lot (laughs) and spent all my time at the beach. There was a big skim-boarding community at
Laguna Beach. We all did that. I wouldn’t call myself a surfer dude, but
surfing’s a fun time in the ocean.
Jordan: I was
actually born at Hogue Hospital in Newport.
We lived there a couple years. I
feel this need to go back and get to know my, like, beach roots.
Mikal: (Laughs) Yeah, it’s an interesting way to grow up,
right on the beach but it’s beautiful and it’s healthy to spend a lot of time
by the ocean.
Jordan: So what do
you all do outside of music and stuff?
Do you all have hobbies or anything?
Mikal: We all like to
skate a bit. We’re all pretty obsessed
with music. I spend most of my time
playing music, but we do spend time outside of practicing and playing music
(laughs). We’ll all drink beers and
listen to records and watch stupid movies.
I don’t feel like I have any interesting hobbies any more because I’ve
become so obsessed with making music. I
guess I’ve become kind of boring in that aspect. I like to ride bikes around and hang out.
Jordan: Do you write anything
other than music, like poetry or short stories?
Mikal: I used to
write more than I do now. I never felt
comfortable writing poetry but there was a time when I would explore writing
music. I’ve become interesting in
writing a story or a comic and having a musical accompaniment, like a record
with a comic book or short story. When I
was in school, I wrote a lot of music for short films, which was
interesting. I wish I had the skill to
make my own films. I’m really interested
in film but have never had the means or know how to make them. The idea of mixing music with other mediums
is really interesting to me.
Jordan: Do you draw
too or would you focus on the writing?
Mikal: I don’t know,
I’m not good at that, but I have a lot of talented friends who would be able to
help me out with that. I’m definitely
not a good artist or drawer. Right now
at this point in my life and for the last many years, my artistic output is all
musical.
Jordan: It seems like
it’s been just a lot of stuff recently.
Just kind of blew up recently when you and Ty played the Duke Coffeehouse
recently. I had listened to Ty for a
while but hadn’t heard your stuff and known you were thick with him, but was
definitely happy to see that awesome show there. I think there are a lot of people getting
into you and Ty and stuff from San Francisco.
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| Reverse Shark Attack |
Mikal: That’s
awesome. That’s good news. There’s a lot of music revolving around our
group of friends. We all started working
with each other and having collaborations.
Even I have a hard time keeping up, so I can only imagine someone
outside keeping up, but it’s fun.
Jordan: So right now,
what are you especially working on putting out? What can we expect this year
from you in terms of releases?
Mikal: Things are up
in the air in terms of release dates for my stuff, but, like I said, I’m
totally focused on writing a new LP right now, which, hopefully, I can get out
by the end of the year. There’s a
reissue of an album me and Ty made together called “Reverse Shark Attack” ::Jordan Breaks in like a Total Jerk::
Jordan: Oh man! I love that thing, but I haven’t been able to
get my hands on it!
Mikal: It’s coming
soon. I’m excited because they only
pressed a limited amount of it and I know there are people who want to get a
hold on it. So, yeah, it’ll be coming
very soon. As far as stuff I’m
associated with, the Ty Segall band project is coming out next month. Right now, I’m just touring a lot and trying
to write and hopefully by the end of the year, I’ll have another LP out.
Jordan: Where all
will you be touring? I saw there were a
bunch of European dates up this summer.
Mikal: Yeah, I’m
going to Europe for the first time, which is exciting. I’m going in June. In May, I’ll be touring in Ty Segall’s ban
around the U.S. In June, I’m going to
Europe. In July, Ty’s going to
Europe. In August, I think we’re doing
another U.S. tour and then I might do some East Coast dates towards the end of
the year in my band. We’re still working
it out. After these next couple of
tours, I will probably take a break until I have another record to tour
with. Yeah, but I’ve been working on
Moonhearts stuff and Ty and I are about to work on something soon.
Jordan: Well,
anything else you want to say to your adoring fans?
Mikal: I don’t know
(laughs). Come out to shows? Thanks for the support. This is all going way better than I thought
it would as far as people and positive response to the record. That’s awesome. I’m really excited for the future.
