Unwed Sailor performs at Kirby’s Beer Store on Thursday, July 10, in support of its 10th full-length album, “Cruel Entertainment.”
Founded by bassist Johnathon Ford in 1998 in Tulsa, the group (rounded out by drummer Matthew Putnam and guitarist David Swatzell; Patrick McGill also appears on the latest recording) has never stopped making music in that time. Since 2019 and the arrival of the record “Heavy Age,” it’s kept an impressive pace of one album a year with several of those releases being hailed as the band’s best work to date.
Ford recently spoke about the new album and Unwed Sailor’s future plans from his home in Tulsa.
The following interview has been edited for length and for clarity.
This album has some darker moments on it when compared to past Unwed Sailor releases.
The song “Rock Candy,” the opener, I would say is darker, noisier. We’re definitely feeding off the influence of the [Austin, Texas] band Cherubs. They did this discordant noise rock. Bands like The Jesus Lizard and Cows were influential on this record as were Fugazi and Quicksand. We got a little noisier. I think with the title “Cruel Entertainment,” the whole concept hit me [at once]: Being in a band, running your own social media, relying on Spotify monthly listeners, this whole game that you have to play now to live in the music world, to function, can get real overwhelming if you’re doing it all yourself for the most part.
It’s also reflecting on the mental health aspect of that. To do this every day, you’re having to battle algorithms and all this stuff. I’ve done this for a long time [but right now] is a whole new world for me, navigating this new music world. I think the noisier, heavier, darker element of it is the expression of that and [wanting to] release a little bit of that so I can have fun playing music.
There’s another dynamic, too, which is that in the past you were competing with other bands for record sales and concert attendance. But now you’re also potentially in competition with fake music, thanks to AI.
Exactly. That’s a whole other thing that we’re starting to see that we’ve got to navigate through. It’s cruel entertainment.
I wanted to talk specifically about the track “Sad Help,” which I thought was one of those pieces that really exemplifies that darker turn.
When I wrote that bassline, I wrote it on an acoustic bass and for some reason it reminded me of R.E.M. In my demo files it’s listed as “R.E.M. Song,” but then I put some distortion on the bass, put the beat in, Dave came in and did guitars. [I thought], “Wow, this is darker and heavier than I expected it to be.” Then we started channeling some Fugazi influence in there and at the end, I feel like we basically ripped off the Quicksand “Slip” album, just their guitar style and everything. That song just turned out to be a nod to Fugazi and Quicksand.
So, a song can really change from the time you demo it to the time that you start recording it.
When Matt and Dave come in, sometimes things just go in an opposite direction. It’s pretty amazing. Most of the time it all unfolds in the studio. We never get together beforehand and write anything. It’s real surprising sometimes.
The music has such definition to it. Everyone has their space within a song, and I never feel like I’m getting overwhelmed with information.
That’s all in the mixing. Mixing Unwed Sailor albums can be tough because a lot of times there’ll be four or five bass tracks going: lead bass melodies, a foundational bass, then even a lower bass than that. Dave loves to stack guitars, so sometimes you’ll have four or five guitars. Matt loves percussion, so sometimes there’ll be four or five percussion tracks. You really have to think about what you’re doing when you mix an Unwed Sailor record. [Laughs.]
There’s so much stuff. Sometimes we’ll pull stuff. “We have a counter melody over here that’s kind of doing the same thing as another melody, so we’ll just pull that.” Thankfully, we’ve done this long enough that we’ve figured a lot of that out. But there are times when it can be challenging, even to pick out what melody you want to be at the forefront when you have 10 going at the same time. Honestly, my favorite part of making an Unwed Sailor record is mixing because that’s when you hear everything come to life. Tracking, for me, is not the most fun. It’s stressful, you’re under the microscope. But when we get to mixing, that’s when I really have a good time.
When you’re making the album and stacking four or five bass parts into a tune, you’re probably not thinking a lot about how you’re going to do it live.
I try not to think about that. For a while, we were just having to pick out what melodies we were going to do live. Now we’ve incorporated some backing tracks here and there to help us cover that. That was a big insecurity for me at first because I’m very old school. [Just give me] a three- or four-piece rock band, but it just came to the point where we couldn’t do it anymore as a three piece or a four piece. To make up for the expansiveness of the album, we do have some tracks put in there to keep it going so that you’re not hearing something completely, drastically different than the album.
You have material that goes back to the late 1990s. How do you choose from all of that for your shows? There are some people who have been around for a while and then there are others who are just finding you.
Lately we’ve tended to go with our last six albums. We’ll play mostly from those. On the dates that we’re doing this year, we’re playing a lot of “Cruel Entertainment.” I think half the set is “Cruel Entertainment.” The songs on the record are so big and rock-oriented, you just want to play those live and experience those. We try to throw in some older ones like “Ruby’s Wishes” [from 1998’s “Firecracker” EP]. Everyone loves that one or “Firecracker” or something off [2001’s] “The Faithful Anchor.” But there’s some songs, like [songs from 2003’s] “The Marionette and The Music Box.” That has songs that are hard to throw in as they are on that record because it’s just a completely different musical direction. It’s toy instruments and samples of us dropping coins on tables. Sometimes we’ll have to re-write or restructure the “Marionette” songs where they’re a little more rock.
Also, we’re not at the stage where we can play a two-hour set. We’re usually at 45 minutes, so try to pick mostly from the new records.
You’ve had this great run that started in 2019 with the album “Heavy Age.” You hadn’t stopped making music, the band wasn’t totally dormant or anything, but it had been a while since you’d done a full album. Did you know back in 2019 that you were going to commit to this schedule of an album a year?
It felt that way. It was exciting to get “Heavy Age” out there. It was a massive record. It was the longest record we’ve ever done. It was over an hour. It was exciting to have it out. The press around it was really good. People seemed excited. That excitement and movement kicked in. We were in Seattle on tour, and David Bazan from Pedro The Lion came out to our show, and I was talking to him about the new record. He mentioned the idea that he wanted to put out a record a year. He thought that would be a nice challenge and something to do. It just stuck with me. I decided that I would try that, too. So, since 2019, that’s what we’ve done.
It's working. We were in the studio last week tracking our 11th album, which will come out next year. We’re on that same cycle, and I don’t plan on getting off of it unless I get completely uninspired, but I don’t see that happening.
I have so many demos, little ideas for songs, so every year I just go back to those, or I’m writing new ones, and I just start picking out the ideas that make sense together, and then I officially demo those, write the whole song, then send them to Matt and Dave, and we just start the cycle again. Usually, we’ll complete an album by the fall and then right when that’s done, I’ll start doing the demos for the next one, December-January, something like that.
Do you have a favorite song from this current show that’s your favorite to play live?
Right now, it’s “Indian Paintbrush” off “Heavy Age.” That song is just so big and epic. Dave’s guitar playing … he’s on the wah pedal, the Space Station pedal. Me makes the hugest wall of sound live. My basslines are pretty easy on that song, so I don’t have to think a whole lot while I’m playing it. I can let go a little bit and really enjoy what’s happening around me. That’s been, for the last couple of years, my favorite song to play. You can just swim in that song. It’s just so big and heavy. It’s just all around you.
