TWEAKER
Tweaker is the quasi-solo project, or perhaps alter ego, of Chris
Vrenna after his departure from Nine Inch Nails in 1996. Now on his
second album "2a.m. wakeup call" carries on Chris's audio journeys.
Inspired by his wives' long bout of insomnia that constantly woke them
up at 2a.m., this album deals with nighttime, dreams, nightmares, and
all things that keep us up at night. Showing a growth away from the
programmed noises of his first album, "2a.m. wakeup call" is formed
around more emotional, human performances, instrumentation, and many
amazing guest singers. David Sylvian,and Will Oldham reprise their
performance on the first Tweaker album, along with Mellowdrone, Robert
Smith, Nick Young, Hamilton Leithauser, and Jennifer Charles. The only
direction Chris gave his guests is the question, "What keeps you up at
night, and what do you dream about?" Movement caught up with Chris who
is preparing to open for Skinny Puppy.
First off I gotta skim through the press release. Hows your wife's
insomnia doing?
Ah, she's fine. It lasted for a few months. You know how we go in
cycles? Sometimes we get in cycles of not much sleep, then can't
sleep, then you get into cycles where it's like if you get anything
less than ten hours a night you're just like wasted the next day. So,
she seems to be back into one of those right now.
You didn't tour for the last album did you?
No, cause sadly the first record did come out right at 9/11 and
everything that could go wrong went wrong, you know. Records never
made it to the stores on time because of no planes and deliveries for
a week. A couple tours we were actually up for being opening guests
for, they were English bands and everybody canceled all their tours.
Remember that's when everybody cancelled their tours and were like, 'Ahhh...I
don't really feel like comin to America?' Every opportunity got lost
and by the time everything got fixed around, which really didn't
happen until after that New Year, the record was kind of like dead in
the water as it was. So we're gonna make up for it with this one.
How are you gonna do that as far as the vocals and stuff go, how are
gonna manage that on tour?
Well, I have a plan. The band is four of us. It's me and Clint and
then our bass player, Paul, who is gonna be in the first tour as well
and then we we got our fourth guy, Kevin. I've seen a lot of the tours
for some of these stuff and I don't want to be one of those bands that
walks out there with laptops and everythings pre-programed. At the
same time I don't want to be like Massive Attack.
So tell me about this Clint Walsh fellow. Is he now an official
perminet member of Tweaker?
Yeah, I'm at Clint's producing the Jack Off Jill record. We were at
the very end of the first Tweaker record and he was gonna be in the
band for the tour. It was gonna be me, him and Paul Hill. And then
Tweaker kind of got back burnered. I just started using him for guitar
on remixes and stuff I was working on.
Anything specific keeping you up at night these days except for
planning a tour?
Uh, no, tour and I'm working on game scores and you know, just got a
lot of projects and deadlines still going
on. I kind ofswitched out of production and have gotten more into like
competition and scoring and stuff like that. You know, as less and
less records are getting made, it's kind of like the whole industry is
on hold until everybody figures out what the hell is gonna happen with
itsself, you know?
Right, it is a weird time.
I just like making music and I don't really care who it's for, if it's
for an album, for a movie, for a game, for a TV show...I've done all
of the above in the last year.
It's gonna be so exciting to see you live.
Yeah, I'm really excited to play. All the guys in the band are just
ridiculous musicians. I wanna put a lot of emphasis on it, because
Tweaker is such a project oriented record and everything. And with the
way the industry is going, where people aren't really buying records
whether or not there're stealing them, or people don't care enough to
buy 'em, I don't know.
I'm almost tired of debating the issue anymore. It seems like that's
all I ever do because everyone I know is in the industry one way or
another. But the one thing that is still gonna be special is the live
performance. That's one thing you can't steal, that's one thing you
can't download. You may watch a video tape a year later when they film
it for DVD, but there's nothing like sitting there and just watching
your favorite band that close actually play the stuff. We always try
to make the live show somethin' kind of cool. I think the live
experience is going to become pretty important to fans again; that's
gonna be the one thing you're never gonna be able to take away.
Good point. How'd you end up meeting up with Robert Smith and getting
him to do vocals?
We actually approached him for the first record and he was into it at
the time and was almost going to do it, but then the timing...he was
doing a Cure thing at the time, I forget what it was, if it was late
'90s, what was the last record they were doing...he just didn't have
time...
So it came time for the new record and he actually had time, it was
kind of a done deal from day one. There's something kind of cool about
actually getting to work with your idols. So that was pretty exciting.
There was a big show they were doing out here over the summer and we
converse via email and everything else. Most of that record was done
with singers in their own house. Will's was the only one done in my
house. Everything else was done via FedEx and Protools.
What do you think is the most profound thing you learned from making
the album?
Whew! Profound lesson...
Or was there one?
I think maybe the writing, the way we wrote. I didn't want to get
bogged down in production, and maybe to some degree I'm known for my
weird sounds, just the things I've done. But when it came time to
write, I didn't want to sit up all night trying to find the perfect
distorted kick drum cause that wasn't gonna make the song good and wow
I listened to this crazy keyboard synth pad....who cares? The way we
wrote was we literally had one clean bass for live bass, there's a
clean and a dirty guitar patch, regular piano, samples of an acoustic
drumset for me to map out the parts before I'd actually go record them
later. Just to get the beats down, one electronic kind of sounding
kit, one synth pad and one synth bass patch and acoustic guitar as
well.
Is there anybody left that you're itching to work with?
Oh, yeah...I mean there's always a few people on every Tweaker project
that were kind of like Robert on the first record. There were a few
people on this record that were going to do a track, and we got either
very deep in discussions or they were starting work and something
changed for them and they had to back out.
BEST BETS
05.04
