I like playing music. I don't always like the feeling of people looking at me. I don't think I'm, like, a natural performer, but I'm getting better.

Dan Bejar

Categorized in : Thinking People Feelings

No one appreciates a professional anymore. Everyone's a mystic. Which is why I take drunk Jim over acid Jim - the argument all roads eventually lead to.

acid drunk appreciate

I was born in 1972, which means that in "rock" terms I have no business addressing "the kids" unless it's to shoo them out of my garden.

garden mean kids

I'm just a sucker for new-agey synth sounds and instrumentation. I wasn't really thinking of soft rock, but I know that kind of quiet-storm format uses a lot of these sounds.

storm rocks thinking

I knew what real instruments I wanted and, in some cases, who I wanted to play them. I had started listening to a lot of ambient music and jazz and I wanted to incorporate stuff like that, too.

real listening play

There are too many Destroyer records to just start rattling them left them off, but they're there.

destroyers left records

I certainly didn't predict people who spent years actively disliking the band to all of a sudden like the band. That's pretty funny to me, and it makes playing live kind of interesting, 'cos we're doing lots of things that don't really have a lot to do with that record, and even presenting the songs off that record in a way that's a little more muscular and without as much of the sheen, which is what I think part of what people really liked [about Kaputt].

song years thinking

I actually do see rock and roll as pop music. I think the distinction I was making was that I was going out of my way to have a very consistent approach to production, where nothing kind of punctures the reality - or, I guess, the fake reality - of the album and what you're listening to from beginning to end.

rocks reality thinking

I'm probably more into a more spacious, even meditative, quiet delivery of singing.

delivery singing quiet

I'm more focused as a singer and hands-on with music and more exacting, and less trying to furiously fit a thousands thoughts into a four minute song.

song trying hands

I don't really know what's going on with the Pornographers - everyone's kind of doing their own stuff. I mean, they play shows here or there.

play stuff mean

I've never had any kind of work ethic. I've never sat down with the intention of writing a song.

work-ethic writing song

I don't really listen to rock music anymore. But were I to write a song that sounded like it could be a rock song, I'd probably give it to the Pornographers, and I'd be excited to try to make it work.

rocks writing song

I was a member of the band when it was just, like, a conversation at a bar. Then we constantly practiced, we played shows, we tooled around in the studio. And then, when I moved and kind of bailed on that, is when... So, yeah, for the first, 'Mass Romantic,' I was heavily involved. Then, for a couple records after that, I was not really involved at all.

bars couple firsts

It never really interested me in the past but, for the first time, I wanted to make a pop record. I thought a good way of doing it would be to make songs that didn't really make sense to me as songs; songs that I couldn't just sit down and play in front of someone and then get them to play over it.

Even though people like to say Destroyer [albom] is gibberish and all that, I usually know exactly what I'm saying at every single moment.

single-mom moments people

When I go to a show, all I really want is to hear a performance that sounds legitimate, and not just going through the motions. I'm not sure any amount of jumping up and down really persuades me in either direction.

jumping sound want

When I'm on stage I don't say anything. The last thing I want to do is share my thoughts. I don't know if that's mysterious - maybe it's just old fashioned.

lasts say-anything want

I'm just kind of lazy and messed up and self-managed - self-mismanaged.

Generally, if you could picture a bunch of rock and roll momentum behind a song and it was particularly melodious, maybe the Pornographers would do it. If it was kind of moody and more lyrical, then maybe it would be a Destroyer song. Anything that's really lyrically driven I would keep for Destroyer.

rock-and-roll rocks song

I force myself to care about the music end by wrestling with it for years.

care wrestling years