Teaching and Playing

Local indie-rocker Kelly Bauman is back in Chico after a four and a half year hiatus, in which he headed to bright lights of Portland and San Francisco. Bauman played guitar and sang in Deathstar, a Chico favorite in the early to mid-nineties. The band released a few recordings on small labels, toured and broke up in 1996. Bauman is back seeking a teaching credential at Chico State, recording music and finally, about to play live again. One of his tracks will be featured on an upcoming KCSC compilation. I caught up with Kelly, who was jacked up on coffee, at Taco Bell in downtown Chico last week to talk about recording, the state of the Chico music scene and his thoughts on the joys of touring.

What kind of music are you playing now?
It’s songy kind of music. It’s not super revved up crazy rock, but it’s loud. It’s really melodic. It’s probably as melodic as anything I’ve ever played. I think that over the next six months I’ll be incorporating rhythm a lot more.
Have you ever heard My Bloody Valentine (a very influential melodic nineties band that used layers of distorted guitar to create a dreamlike sound)? I like that linear, loud, but very straight. Almost rigid, but I also like things to have some sort of swing in it.
I’m no great drummer. That’s not the instrument I grew up with, whereas the guitar is, but I’m sick of guitar. Guitar’s boring. Not because I’m good, but just because I’ve been playing it for a long time. There’s only so many tunings that you can play with. That’s what it kind of boils down to, just having a different tuning for every single song, blah blah blah. It’s just kind of getting to the point where it’s too much work.
I like the idea now, that I can take a simpler guitar thing and flushing it out with lots and lots of other . . . whether it’s cello or strings or something like that. (Playing with a cellist) has been my one of my favorite playing experiences in a long time. Playing with that different sound, because I’ve just been in rock bands for the last ten years.
"These days, as much as playing right now, recording is as much as a fascination for me. The goal has been to get as many different ways to input sounds into recording as I can. I have a turntable, I just got a Roland jazz synthesizer that’s amazing, that I love. This old 60s Ampex reel to reel, that’s my savior right now. And, what’s funny is that I got that from the Salvation Army for like $50. I built a pair of pre-amps and they don’t hold a candle to this old piece of shit."

How much have you recorded and what are you goals? What are you planning on doing with it?

I have a million recordings that I’ll probably never do anything with. It’s finally getting to the point for (the KCSC) compilation where I have a track that I’ve finally got rough vocals for it and it’s complete. I want to finish up the vocals and spend some time on it. Since I left Chico, four and a half years ago, that’s all I’ve been doing, is recording by myself. I borrowed a friend’s four-track and he actuality let me into his studio at night when he wasn’t recording bands. That’s where I got hooked on it. If you want to do it, and you want to continue to do it and you want to present it to other people in any sort recorded format, I like the idea of controlling those means. The idea of going to a studio, and worrying about how much money you’re spending, and time, I don’t want to do that. I get too wrapped up in little things. I’d spend $100 figuring out something totally incidental. People would be like, ‘Why’d you even care in the first place?’ and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know."
I probably have 25 or 30 stupid little things that I would be embarrassed to play for anybody and maybe two or three things that are really okay. It’ll probably be awhile. Hopefully, I’ll put something out soon. I think now’s a good time to put records out. There’s some good small labels. There’s good enthusiasm for different music. People talk about how dead music is now, but I don’t really see that. Right now seems like a great time for music. Nobody’s trying to be Nirvana. There’s lots of room for everybody to do what they do and be appreciated by smaller groups of people. The culture feels more legitimate right now because there’s no race for the prize.

Yeah, it seems like, at least judging by the bands that come through the Blue Room, that there’s a lot of really good and eclectic bands right now. Some of the bands are in similar genres, but there’s not one sound.
If it wasn’t for the Blue Room, I wouldn’t be as happy in Chico. That’s one of the reasons it was okay for me to move back. The shows that come to the Blue Room are shows that people would travel in the city to go see. You’d be standing at Bottom of the Hill with 300 other kids. Like (San Diego’s) Tristeza, or whatever, some other hipster band. It’d be easy to take that for granted, if you had never lived somewhere where those shows are a pain in the ass to go see and a lot of times they’re pretty lackluster. You go and you stand there, your back hurts, your feet hurt, the beers are $4.25. Here it’s a dream come true. I like Chico for music a lot.

Have you been played live by yourself recently?
Yeah. . . I’m going to try and be ready to play. It’s usually terrible. I’m serious too. I’m going to try, this time, to actually be legitimately prepared.
I like playing by myself there (Moxie’s). The way that room works. It’s a wonderful place to sit down and play guitar. It’s a really nice sounding room for that.

Had you just been playing by yourself while you were in Portland and San Francisco?
Yeah, mostly. I kind of wanted to do that for awhile. I still like doing that actually. Though these days me and Jim Rizzuto (drummer for the iMPS and ex-drummer for Deathstar) and John Lawrence, who used to be in Pitchfork Tuning. A lot of songs I recorded by myself, we’re turning into band songs, we’re trying to get it together to play out in a month or two. I’m excited about it. And make a record. That’s kind of the push actually, we want to produce a record and may play a few shows, but the idea of drinking four nights a week and sleeping on floors is not for me. I’ve had enough of that.

You’re finished with your teaching credential next year. Do you know what you’re doing after that?
Teaching and rocking, period. I can’t wait, because summers will give me time to tour, but I won’t be touring with 75 cents in my pocket. We’ll have enough money to eat and we’ll have enough money to have coffee in the morning. That makes it okay for me. I don’t want to be in Wyoming, where it’s three degrees, standing in a phone booth talking to my parents, ‘I love you guys.’ I don’t want that to happen again.

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