Go 'Slower', Notice More: Talking With Jules Shear

Songwriter and musician Jules Shear is releasing his new album Slower on November 13th via Funzalo Records, and his first single from the album, "Smart" is out now. They both represent quite a different approach to his previous album One More Crooked Dance, but are very much in keeping with the songwriting and sounds fans have come to look forward to from Shear.

One More Crooked Dance took on a more of a Folk sound, using vocal harmonies and piano in an enthralling way, but Slower brings us back to the fresh, fairly genre-less zone where Shear seems to reside most of the time, carving out carefully balanced lyrics that raise questions about relationships and human experience. If you look closely you also might find a sense of humor even in the darker moments of his songs.

Shear's songs, titles, and lyrics, are very much left up to the interpretation of the audience, and even the album's title, Slower, raises questions, since it's not some kind of post-mortem on life or an elegy to older years in the least. But maybe those things you notice when you go slower are the things you need to notice, as in these new songs.

Jules Shear spoke to Tower's PULSE! from his home in Woodstock, New York, about a wide range of things including songwriting, recording methods, the merits of different musical formats, and the mystique behind making totally "random" mix CDs.

Hannah Means-Shannon: It sounds like you have a lot of musician friends in the Woodstock area who you sometimes work with. Is that true?

Jules Shear: I do have musician friends in the area, that’s true. People on this record were pretty much everybody who lived in this area.

HMS: [Laughs] You just rounded them all up?

JS: Yes, I don’t think anyone on this record was from somewhere else.

HMS: What’s the timespan for working on this record? Did you manage to finish it before the world went crazy?

JS: I just got in before that, that’s right. It would probably be impossible to do it right now.

HMS: Especially collaboration becomes difficult. You’re predictable in your productivity. You’re always working and you’re always getting stuff ready to release, it seems. You must have known you were going to do another album. When did you start writing these songs, though? Are some of them older, some of them newer?

JS: They are all from a new period of writing, except for one song. The older one is called “It Came Down From Heaven”.

HMS: Do you ever notice that songs are tied to certain times in your life, or are they more general?

JS: I don’t really think about that. This songwriting business is something I try to make as natural as possible. That means I’m just writing songs and I’m not thinking, “Oh, I’m going to write this for a certain period.” I’m just writing songs. Whatever comes out, comes out and that’s the way I like to do it, naturally.

HMS: That’s cool. I wonder if that makes it more interesting for you because you’re not over-analyzing anything. Then it can be more surprising for you as well. Then you can be more invested in the experience. 

JS: Yes, that’s right. That’s good. I think that’s all true. I’d rather not really think about why I’m doing this. But I’m just doing it, and that’s the important thing.

HMS: Something I noticed about your previous album, One More Crooked Dance, is that it has some sound commonalities among the songs. The songs seem like they fit together in terms of having harmonies and having a Folks aspect. Was that more of a concept for the album? Or did you just want to change things up for that album?

JS: It’s really that I’m doing things more in the moment. In the recording aspect, I’m doing things in the moment. Those songs did have something in common. It was who I wanted to work with, really. I had met this piano player named Pepe. I thought it would be interesting to do something with him playing instead of me playing. So I would just write out the songs and then give them to him. Then I’d say, “Here’s what we’re doing.” And he’d play them, so that was cool. I didn’t have to play them on my own, which I really enjoyed. That was very simple. But I wanted it to be a simple album, so it ended up being a simple album.

HMS: I think it’s really cool so I’m glad you made those decisions. It’s not what you hear very often. It’s very distinctive even though it has traditional elements. It’s less common these days. 

JS: I guess it is. That’s good that you liked it, though, thanks.

HMS: You’ve worked with various band over time, and now you work much more solo, though you do collaborate, like with your friend Pepe. Do you think you learned things from working in bands that was useful to you later?

JS: I didn’t really learn things that I know of when I was working with other people. It’s just a matter of what I want things to sound like. I wasn’t looking at it as a learning experience, I wasn’t thinking of that. 

HMS: Of course, you can have bad experiences that also teaching you things and leaving you saying, “Well, I’m never going to do that again.”

JS: That’s true. How do you know that?

HMS: Unfortunately, I think I’ve learned a lot more from my bad experiences than from my good experiences in life. But sometimes that teaches you what you want, and you know that a little better afterwards.

Tell me about your personal history with your home base of Woodstock. I hear it goes back to the 80s.

JS: I had a guy at a record label who really thought that the ultimate album would be, “Jules Gets Produced By Todd Rundgren”. Since Todd lived in Woodstock, I came to visit him here and spoke to him. I’ve spoken to lots of Producers who I didn’t use over time, but I thought Todd would be really interesting. I thought it would be really fun to do an album here. I accepted that. I was living in Boston, I believe. When I came up here to work with Todd, I thought, “This place is pretty cool. I wonder if I could actually move here and then I would be closer to New York. That would be really good.” Plus, I wasn’t that enthusiastic about Boston at the time. So I thought it would be good for me to get away from there. I thought it would work out well.

Todd allowed me to stay at his guest place while I looked for a place to live, and then I moved up here. Now, that’s a long time ago. It was around 1984 or 1985. I rented a place here for a little while, then I moved to New York City for a little while, and then I thought, “Nah, I want to live in Woodstock.” I came up here and actually bought this house which is really a great house for me. It’s got a studio and stuff. I had never had a studio before made for me to work in so that was really handy. It was good to not have to sit in the living room and try to come up with something, which is how it would usually be. It’s been really great. That’s where I am right now, in my studio.

HMS: Was the studio already built as part of the house before you got there?

JS: It was not built. I’ll give you an explanation. The guy who owned this house had just started building a studio. He got word that the guy at the end of this road, which is a dirt road, had died and he went and purchased that guy’s house. That meant he had to sell this one. But it wasn’t totally built, and the work room wasn’t built. So I said, “Let me have a little input into it, and we’ll make it for me.”

He’s a writer so he’d already worked it out that this was a place where he couldn’t hear anyone and wouldn’t be disturbed by anyone, so that was really great. That was really what I’d always wished for. So, he sold me the place. For me, I was the first person to come up here and use this room, and I’ve used it a lot.

HMS: This may be going down the rabbit hole, but what kind of equipment do you like to keep there?

JS: Here’s the thing: I don’t like to keep very much equipment here because I like to record when it comes time to record, and when it comes times to write, I don’t like to record. So I just made it so that I had something to record upon and just had very little equipment. Just my guitars and anything to record upon. I would just use almost anything. I’d just set up in the middle of the room and go at it.

I can’t really think that I’ve had any real equipment here. After I finish the songs, then I’d take them to a studio and then I’d really do them for real. That would give them someplace to go and they wouldn’t have had any place to go otherwise, if I’d done too much here. I just really basically wrote songs.

HMS: So you like the fact that they might develop in different directions once they are actually being recorded in a studio?

JS: Yes. 

HMS: You’re creating just a very basic demo for yourself when you’re at home?

JS: Right.

HMS: Do you use things like smartphones to record demos? That’s becoming very common.

JS: That would probably work out well but I don’t do that. 

HMS: I somehow suspected that.

JS: [Laughs]

I like to do it the same way that I’ve always done it, then I don’t have to think about that part of it. I use whatever tape recorder or whatever there is around here. I know it sounds kind of old-fashioned to use a tape recorder.

HMS: Actually, tapes are back. You might find that hard to believe. We sell a lot of tapes at Tower Records.

JS: Tapes? 

HMS: Tapes. People want them. 

JS: You’re talking about cassettes?

HMS: I am! We have thousands of tapes. What formats are you using for Slower?

JS: Old fashioned compact discs. I’ve always thought that they sounded the best so I thought we should do that. I haven’t really made any vinyl records, because even though I would be interested in that, I don’t think it would sound as good as the compact disc. But people download stuff, and that’s okay. I never download anything. It’s compact discs for me. That’s how I listen to everything.

That’s how I make compilations of stuff, with compact discs, to compact discs, and so I have all these compact discs of stuff I know I like. That’s what I really enjoy doing to listen to music.

Now, what do you listen to?

HMS: That’s a good question. I listen to a lot of stuff that I purchase digitally and is on my phone, because I go running and walking a lot. Then, I have some CDs that I’ve collected over the years. But I now have a fairly sizable vinyl collection, both old vinyl and new vinyl. So, everything really. I even have some cassettes. I think I prefer digital and vinyl to cassettes, though.

JS: I’ve never really liked the sound of cassettes. I have a big box of them and I looked through them recently. I thought, “Well, there’s a lot of stuff here that I’d never be able to get on CD. Maybe I should have some way of playing them.” But I didn’t want another format in my life. So I didn’t do it. It doesn’t sound as could. It couldn’t because the tape is going so slow. But people enjoy all kinds of stuff. I know they enjoy records, and I don’t blame them. Because it’s nostalgic, I understand that. I have a bunch of records, but I never play them. It seems like it’s strictly nostalgia for me.

HMS: You mentioned being able to mix your own CDs. That’s very interesting because it’s the last physical media format where people can do that. You can make playlists digitally on Spotify and things, and people do that. They share them with each other and they are themed in different ways. But to be able to make your own CDs for yourself and others does put the power in your own hands in a way that’s disappearing otherwise.

JS: I think it does. Not that anybody ever hears these CDs, mostly. There are a few people who are crazy about it, and say, “You have another CD for me!!”

HMS: That’s great. What are you doing with them? Are you mixing different artists or putting together different songs by the same artist?

JS: No, they are strictly random. The only thing that connects the songs together are that I dig the songs. I dig the music that’s on it, and that’s all there is to it.

HMS: Well, okay then. Does this cross eras and genres?

JS: Yes, that’s what it means. It’s anything that I like. Some people wouldn’t be into it, but this is the music that I’m into.

HMS: So, the way that you’re randomly selecting songs for these CDs makes me wonder if when you’re recording your own albums, you try to be random about that too, in terms of track order or what songs make it on?

JS: I try to have more sense than that because I’ve been making records for a while. First, when I was making them, people would always talk about the way that it was sequence. Saying, “Oh God, the sequence is so important.” I’d ask, “Okay, what do you think the sequence should be?” And they’d tell me, and I’d say, “I don’t think that’s really it at all.”

It’s really difficult for me to know that’s what the sequence should be. People who work for record labels can actually sequence things, that’s one of the things they can do. They can’t write a song but they can make up these sequences. I got into it as a result of thinking, “I’d rather do it than them.” So I’d do the sequence myself.

But on random CDs, I do not make a sequence at all. The thing that makes them not random is that I like everything on them, but as far as which song leads into another song, that is definitely random.

HMS: I have a harder question: what do you think makes you like a song or these songs? Do they have a similar quality level? Is it that they’ve been written well or recorded well? Or would you think, “This is a good song.” Even if was a rough demo?

JS: A rough demo wouldn’t make any difference to me. But I don’t know what makes it so that I like it. That’s mysterious. Who knows what that thing is? I have no idea. When I listen to a random CD of mine, I think, “This isn’t really like what I do as a songwriter.” It’s usually not like that. I don’t want to try to make my work like those CDs. But I don’t think what I listen to is really the same as what I enjoy recording, actually.

HMS: That makes sense to me because what I enjoy reading is not what I enjoy writing, either.

JS: There you go! That’s interesting. I would figure that would be less likely. Do you think a lot of people feel that way?

HMS: A lot of fiction writers who I know love reading non-fiction, then they go and write fantasy, sci-fi, detective stories. But they are sitting there reading the biography of George Washington. What goes in is not necessarily what comes out!

JS: I think that’s very important. I think that’s really interesting. The stuff I listen to on my random CDs is older. It’s a lot of 40s or 50s.

HMS: That’s really cool. How do you discover music, though? How do you come across stuff?

JS: That’s a good question. It’s the same way I’ve always done it. Something about it calls out to me, I don’t know what it is. It could be wrong. Something calls out to me about the music and I listen to it. I could get it totally wrong and dislike everything on the record, but that’s okay with me. It’s really just a matter of randomly trying to do it.

HMS: Do you go to a music store? Do you have one you can go to when we’re not in a pandemic?

JS: I wish I did. I kind of do. Rhino Records is in Kingston and that was great, but I don’t think they are open. But there’s Oldies.com. They get a lot of stuff and I have to make myself cool it and not get everything. Other than that, it’s really just Amazon. I see what they are offering and see what’s out. A lot of it’s English because they put out all the best reissue stuff, even though the music is American. If they put it out in America, no one would be interested in the stuff. Why is that?

HMS: That’s the whole story of Rock ‘n Roll right there.

JS: [Laughs] Rhino puts out some of these records, but I don’t know, I don’t think Rhino is that great.

HMS: It seems like the British have been telling us what’s good in American music for a long time. It was really the British who made people realize that Sun Records was cool and important.

JS: That’s probably quite true. I don’t know why I’m more interested in older stuff, but I am.

HMS: You’re single is out now, “Smart”. Was there any particular thinking about why that one made a good single?

JS: Personally, I had not particular thinking about what would make a good single. I left that to the people putting this out and said, “Go ahead, do what you want.” That’s what they chose. I keep thinking they chose it because it’s a little more up tempo. Or maybe somebody just really liked that song. 

HMS: Well, it has a lot of individuality to it. It’s its own thing. But from what I’ve heard, your songs usually are. I think it’s an interesting song. It reminds me of the time just before Grunge when Punk and Folk music were coming together and sometimes had these acerbic lyrics that kind of made you think. This one’s a little bit like that.

JS: That’s cool. That sounds good!

HMS: I heard that you write your lyrics before you write your music.

JS: I don’t write all the words, I just write some. When I sit down to write a song, I will have something in front of me that are some words that I can start from and make it into a song. To fill in the gaps, basically, and get more specific about it. It will start with maybe six lines or something like that. Then I’ll try to come up with some music that I really like. But I think it’s better for me to start with some words.

When I used to start with music, then I’d write music and I’d have to come up with something. And that seemed like the difficult part. But if you start with something right away, then you’re headed in a direction and that really helps me.

HMS: Kind of like an established flavor or tone first?

JS: Yes.

HMS: Do you add in the rest of the words during the demo stage in your home studio or in the recording studio?

JS: Home studio. I like to finish it in the home studio so I know exactly what the song is, including the intros and where the solo goes. All that is decided in my studio before I go to a recording studio.

HMS: Does anyone ever suggest you change things, or give you feed back at the recording studio stage?

JS: I don’t think people suggest anything to me. I think people think, generally, “If anybody knows how to do it, this guy knows how to do it.”

HMS: You should put that on a t-shirt and make sure everyone adheres to that. That’s a good rule! 

JS: [Laughs] 

[Photo by Dion Ogust]

HMS: I forgot to ask you about MTV Unplugged. What was that experience like for you? What led you to do it?

JS: When I first had this idea about doing a show where people would just perform their songs in a real stripped-down way, I was surprised that MTV said, “Yeah, do it!” So basically, we did a season of that. What I wanted to do would be to have two acts on every show besides me and I wanted them to perform together, if they could. Then we’d have something really interesting that people wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. I thought that would be fun.

That changed over time because people starting saying, “That’s not what this is. This is a show where people are promoting their album.” When Don Henley would do the show, and he’d have a whole orchestra, he’d say, “It’s all unplugged.” But people were able to do all kinds of stuff, and it was okay with me. A lot of people did perform together on it. When they did perform together, I thought that was really the most fun. And they were performing with acoustic instruments.

It wasn’t long before people started saying, “We’re going to just use a bass.” But I’d say, “If you’re going to use a bass, you’re getting into electric instruments. Why not use electric guitars too?” People at MTV would be saying, “No, Jules, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

HMS: They didn’t want to upset anyone?

JS: That’s pretty much it. 

HMS: It was like a crossover, like a team up between two artists who might not otherwise have ever worked together?

JS: Yes, and I wasn’t thinking, “Oh this is great music.” But I was thinking, “This is interesting.” And it was fun when we did it. But after a season of doing it, MTV decided they didn’t want any host, and one group per show, as a promotional thing. I said, “Okay, that’s fine, but I don’t want to be involved in that.” That was it for me.

HMS: The lure of the marketing tool was too much for them. That’s not surprising at all.

That reminds me a little of that story of the Million Dollar Quartet where Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis all ended up recording together informally at Sun. Someone had the presence of mind to turn on a recorder.

JS: I’ve heard of that, but I’ve never heard that stuff.

HMS: It was finally released relatively recently. It had never been mastered or anything.

JS: That would be really fun to hear. 

HMS: The songs are not what you’d expect, which is great. It’s what they all happened to know on the spot, which was old Folk tunes, Gospel music, and the like from their childhoods.

JS: That sounds good to me.