By: David Rachac
Darin Wald is the singer and songwriter for the sort-of-rock, sort-of-alt-country band Big Ditch Road. In this interview, Wald talks about the commercialization of Americana, withdrawing from culture to affect his writing process and meaning behind the title of their new EP, The Jackson Whites.
Big Ditch Road - Photo by Steven Cohen
HWTS: The Jackson Whites is Big Ditch Road's fourth release, but the second EP in a row—was this conscious move on your part, or just the way it worked out?
Darin Wald: It was a conscious move. Each EP’s songs were written in a very specific manner and within a very specific time frame. As the themes vary on each EP, it didn’t make sense to try to combine them into one album.
The first, The Great Dissent was an effort to keep moving beyond Americana, into territory where the lines weren’t as clear. And it had a great deal to do with our perception that Americana was dead. Everything had been done, and done better, and then came to be that it was marketable. I saw vintage-inspired plaid western shirts with fake mother-of-pearl buttons being peddled out of every GAP from here to New York, and I knew it was dead.
In The Jackson Whites, the worldview opens up, and isn’t nearly as focused on the small pictures that I’d come accustomed to writing/sucking in. It’s more of a macro-socionomic [sic] view of the state of the State. So when we had an album’s worth of songs with two opposing world views, we decided it made more sense to keep them separate.
HWTS: This EP is markedly different from anything you have done before—loose, outgoing, even poppy in places.
DW: We’ve never wanted to make the same record twice. And although we’d been hinting at where we were going for quite a while, I guess it wasn’t as obvious to people as it is now. This is coupled with the fact that I stopped listening to anything remotely new, in any genre, several years ago. I rediscovered a love for reading large tomes that one can’t find in the “current affairs” section of the bookstore, and listened to nothing but Miles Davis’s fusion period. This was an effort to not be influenced by anything. Yes, I know you can’t reinvent the wheel. So, while sometimes I secretly wish I could mimic Big Fun, I’m happy about the disco beats and the bad show tunes transitions in The Jackson Whites—a total bastardization of everything.
HWTS: So removing yourself from the world today was what it took?
DW: Well, I was tired of chasing sounds and wanted to try to do something not tied to any particular genre. That being said, I understand that everything’s been done before, but I tried to free myself up to make something different than I’m accustomed to.
Technology has allowed musicians to react to other musicians in new ways, and more quickly than ever before. But I don’t feel this ability to react more rapidly is necessarily a good thing; rather, I feel as though it has a tendency to dumb everything down. I stopped listening to everything, trying not to get caught up in it.
DW: I came across an essay in some old book about an obscure group of people living in the hills near New Jersey. The story is that during the Revolutionary war, defecting Hessian soldiers and British concubines fled the British army into the hills of New Jersey. There, they mated with a local native tribe and some remain there to this day. Since I’ve always been interested in the obscure, I wondered what it would be like if they were still there—and some scholarly papers say they do still exist—and being pushed out by sprawl.
HWTS: With the exception of you, everyone in Big Ditch Road plays in at least one other band. Has that been a hindrance in achieving your goals for this band? Or does it help to keep things fresh?
DW: Well, the scene here has always been incestuous. As of now, nobody’s been forced to make a decision to choose one band over another. So far, it’s worked out fine and hasn’t been a hindrance. Every once in a while you can’t do a gig, but most of the time it works out. And a lot of times what you’ll find is that you become friends and supporters of the other bands your members are in.
HWTS: Your CD release party is at the Turf Club this Friday. Tell us what we can expect to see.
DW: Young lust, conspiracy theorists, zombies, sprawl, disco beats, documentary lovers, gold standard pamphlets, bookish types, fixed-gear commuters, Klaus Kinski doppelgangers, Alex Jones listeners, falconry and a very, very good bill.
HWTS: At the end of February, you will be playing at the Eclectone Records Fifth Anniversary show at the Varsity. As one of the initial bands affiliated with Eclectone, talk about the impact that Eclectone has had on your band.
DW: Martin Devaney started Eclectone on the premise of like and mutual respect for other musicians, which is the only way to start a label in my opinion. Now, as a plus, Eclectone has the tools in place to help artists figure out these very confusing musical times.
Big Ditch Road’s EP Release will be at the Turf Club on Friday, January 11th, with special guests The Glad Version, Ice Palace and the Wapsipinicon.
Artist Info: Big Ditch Road
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