Interviews
Headdress answer the Questions of Doom
As the summer draws out and everything is kinda leaving you moving as slow as a morphine drip, what music should you listen to? Headdress. They have plans. Kinda think their plans involve heat. Their music bleeds Texan heat. Just bleeds it. Headdress is the 21st century blues man - only shot through a fractal lense, heavily abusing the traditions until it is a blues spiritualist ritual and resurrection. We can’t stop listening to this. We had no choice but to get Caleb in for this week's Questions of Doom.
What are the secret origins of Headdress?
The south fork of the Yuba River, a tent and an old resonator.
How do you see the narrative of Headdress progressing from album to album and where do you think Headdress will head next?
On “Turquoise” we were living in an RV traveling around the Sonoran Desert and we cut that record in the Spring, so I think it’s more of a birth. The Desert was blooming and the grasslands were golden. Everything was beautiful, but the cicadas were coming and the heat of Summer was on it’s way. So I think there’s an impending sense of doom amidst the beauty. “Lunes” was cut during the dead of Winter in the woods of upstate New York. We were living in Brooklyn and couldn’t even see the stars at night. Their was nothing but old run down warehouses and far too many people for my liking. So I think that record came off as a much darker meditation. I’m back in the Desert now and spent some time in the Mountains of Colorado as well as stints
in Austin, Los Angeles and Marfa, Texas. I think the new record is going to be a marriage of the last two. There’s going to be dark elements and heavy fuzz mantras, but I want to get back to the beauty and simplicity of “Turquoise” as well. There are a few stripped down, washed out acoustic ragas in my bag.
You’ve expanded your line up recently to include three extra members, why the change up? And what did the extra members bring to Headdress?
I think it was just a natural progression. Even during the recording of “Lunes” I kept saying we needed drums, we needed more layers. I knew I wanted to go bigger after that record. Who knows, we may be a six-piece when the next one comes out.
I’ve read you have been working on your new album ‘Guerro’? What inspirations and influences are you taking with you into the next album?
Haha. The new album was originally going to be called “Guerra” because we wrote it on a ranch near Guerra, in deep south Texas. I’ve been building a rammed earth house in the Tucson Mountains, in Arizona, for the last year and a half, so the recording got put on hold. Since then my head is in a totally different realm, and I’ve written loads of new material, so I’m not quite sure what we’ll call the next record, but there will be one, a double LP coming soon.
Do you feel there is such a thing as the perfect drone? And if so, do you feel you’ve perfected it?
I don’t dig the concept of perfection, because perfection to me represents the end or ultimate. I want to keep evolving and growing. Drone is my meditation.
What has been the greatest misconception of Headdress?
You tell me. I don’t pay it too much mind.
Are you trying to resurrect the spirit of Texan psychedelia and garage stomp? Where do you think Headdress fits in with the Texas music tradition?
Not at all. The first time someone told me that “Turquoise” was psychedelic I was pretty shocked. I can dig it now, but at the time it wasn’t anything I was going for. I think I’m more influenced by Texan cats like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Townes Van Zandt and Willie Johnson than I am by the Elevators or Shiva’s Headband.
What is the ultimate musical manifesto of Headdress?
Communing with the Divine.
There is a sense of creepy dread to Headdress. What emotions/feelings are trying to convey in the songs?
I think there’s an eerie element to our groove. Whether it’s intentional or not, I don’t know. I dig the darkness, but I still see the light. I just want cats to get lost in our trance. I want to force
them to slow down. Dig the space and time you’re in and grow at your own pace. Our society is too consumed with progress and has lost touch with the spirit within. It’s your own trip, if you’re living in fear then it’s gonna be a bad trip. But if you can face that fear and let it flower, then it’s enlightenment. I try to make music that allows one’s self to return to the source, the center of being.
What records/songs should we be checking out?
German Oak, Junior Kimbrough, La Monte Young, Bombino
What is the ultimate musical manifesto of Headdress?
Communing with the Divine.
There is a sense of creepy dread to Headdress. What emotions/feelings are trying to convey in the songs?
I think there’s an eerie element to our groove. Whether it’s intentional or not, I don’t know. I dig the darkness, but I still see the light. I just want cats to get lost in our trance. I want to force
them to slow down. Dig the space and time you’re in and grow at your own pace. Our society is too consumed with progress and has lost touch with the spirit within. It’s your own trip, if you’re living in fear then it’s gonna be a bad trip. But if you can face that fear and let it flower, then it’s enlightenment. I try to make music that allows one’s self to return to the source, the center of being.
What records/songs should we be checking out?
German Oak, Junior Kimbrough, La Monte Young, Bombino