Talking To The Autumn Defense (Interview)

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The Autumn Defense was formed by two members of Wilco as an outlet for their late 60s/early 70s-inspired power pop and folk-rock tunes. Those two band members are bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone. This is not just a one-off vanity project…the Autumn Defense has just released their latest album, the appropriately-titled Fifth. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to both John Stirratt and Pat Sansone about their creative process and how the two met, back before Pat was a member of Wilco.

Click here to listen to the interview with The Autumn Defense:

You can read a transcription of the Autumn Defense interview here:

MD: Now from what I understand, the previous album Once Around was inspired by the trip you made to New Zealand and were doing the 7 Worlds Collide thing with Neil Finn. Was there any similar impetus to get this thing off the ground?

PS: I think we were just ready to make another record. The experience of making the last one was very positive and it rejuvenated our energy about the project.

MD: Maybe you can tell me how the two of you work together. Do you both play all the instruments, do you bring other people in, do you both write together or bring separate songs in?

JS: Well I guess over the years it’s been slightly different in terms of who we had playing. The one constant has been Greg Wieczorek on drums from the second record and the bass player. I guess this is the first time we’ve really had change. Haggerty play bass. But we’ve recorded with Greg for so long Wieczorek for so long and also there’s a guy called John Pirruccello who plays pedal steel and guitar so in a way we’ve had this ensemble that’s toured with us for a long time. Some guys for eleven years. But we’ve never really gotten them in on every tune or bass sort of sessions on more ensemble sessions. Maybe with the drummer we’d do this three piece at times, just different configurations. This time it was just more of an ensemble from top down. I guess the way it works mainly is Pat will help arrange my tunes and he’s sort of the arranger/producer. I can’t help him much with his tunes but he helps me with mine (laughs).

MD: And you guys have been working together since before Pat was a member of Wilco. How did you guys get together?

JS: Well we were both living in New Orleans at the time. This was in 1999, 1998. And I had a group of songs and kinda realised I wasn’t going to have much luck getting songs on Wilco records (laughs) and I wanted to make a record. And Pat was engineering the studio in New Orleans and we bonded and he helped me flush out the material, arrange it and help record it. By the second record he was contributing songs but living in New York at the time. I guess by 2004 he had moved to Chicago and we thought, you know he joined Wilco and really gave us a chance to get on the same schedule and sort of put out a record every couple of years.

MD: And you have a distinct kind of 70’s folk rock sound. Was that musical style that brought you together something that both of you were really into?

PS: Definitely. I think both of us were brought together to do this project based on our similar record collections. There were a lot of those kinds of things that we were listening to in the early days of the band. Records like Love’s Forever Changes was a big influence and Big Star. We’re both Big Star fans. So there’s just kind of a stew of 60’s English pop and American power pop and American acoustic pop. Just a shared love of those things inform our sound.

MD: I’ve listened to a rough mix of the album and I wanted to run a couple of tunes by you. The first one is None Of This Will Matter which according to my notes here reminded me a lot of BadFinger and Big Star. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that track for me.

JS: Yeah well you know I had it and it had this tempo and beat that were really reminiscent of a mid tempo Big Star tune and I think we tracked it on the electric guitar. I think we did consciously not want to not just track everything acoustically. The last couple of records we’ve definitely dabbled more on the electric guitar. And that sort of rift stuff was kind of right up Pat’s alley and lot of the flourishes he did were out of The Beatles catalogue. And it’s an aspect of what I think we can do.

MD: And when you present a song like that, what goes through your mind?

PS: That song it’s the melody and the chords do lend themselves towards that sort of feeling. But sometimes those things don’t present themselves until we’re in the studio and start running the tune and let it unfold. I remember that tune seemed to come pretty easily. It was something that, the vocabulary was something we were all familiar with. And it was really fun to record. And I think it informed how we were going to move forward.

MD: And another one which stuck out for me was Calling Your Name which had a little Harry Nilsson influence in it or keyboard. Whose song was that?

PS: That was my tune and it was one of the last tune’s we recorded. It came in a funny way. It was a piano figure and very abstract idea. I presented it to our drummer and asked him what would you play on this? And he played some great stuff. And that’s kind of how the song began. But it definitely has a Harry thing with the Wurlitzer

MD: What did you bring to that one?

JS: Well that was one of the last things from the last session and Pat was really able to…the song had enough parts but I don’t know if the words or melody worked out. But he (Pat) is just able to lay it down and really create a song, get a melody. Where’s when I write I generally have to have an idea and the chords are happening. So that’s a really cool ability to be able to just throw down parts and have it come together.

PS: It’s writing by forcing yourself into the corner, throwing yourself into the fire and having to fight your way out of it.

MD: Or jump into the fire? The other one I noted was The Light In Your Eyes which had The Moody Blues influence. Who wants to talk about that one?

JS: That’s cool. I keep thinking it was this weird 80’s sort of song. Just the different changes. And then Pat was doing some Jupiter sort of stuff on it. Like took it and did this 80’s zone. But I guess we never really depart much from the 60’s sort of bass. But that was another one that we pieced together a little bit. It had a pretty good drum performance. But it wasn’t fully formed when we wrote it down.

PS: We like The Moody Blues. I kind of think of that song by The Left Banke. I hear The Left Banke in there which is another big group for us.

MD: Oh the last thing I want to mention is the last track I heard. It had some slide guitar. Who was playing the slide guitar? It sounds very George Harrison-y.

JS: That’s the guy John Pirruccello who’s a great guitar player. He’s also a great bass maker. He makes the basses which I play with onstage and other people all over the world play on. He’s a talented guy. He just busted out that slide part and that was so bad fingered. That had to be on the record in some form.

MD: I assume you don’t really mind being compared to older music. Is it more of an exercise for you guys? Are the songs written specifically for The Autumn Defense? Or are they songs you have around?

PS: I think we’re writing specifically for The Autumn Defense. We know what our strengths are what is going to work for our voices and our particular vocal sound. It’s not so much an exercise to sound like any particular group or any band like that. It’s just what comes naturally for us. And we don’t fight it. We don’t resist it. I think it would be more of an exercise for us to go outside of it. But that will be more of a conscious decision. That will be more of a specific exercise to say ‘let’s get out of this box and don’t sound this way.’ But it’s more natural for us to do what we do and go oh yeah this is like The Moody Blues or this is a Left Bank thing. But it’s not a starting point. It’s more of a reflection.

Click here to read The 13th Floor review of Fifth by The Autumn Defense.

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