Pop Culture Press #50
Fall 2001

Cuba Las Vegas

interview by Peter Barton

I recently got the opportunity to sit down and play twenty (or so) questions with the boys from Cuba Las Vegas. I'd seen them live many times and adore their unique blend of lounge-y, gin-sodden crooner balladeering and wild tempo swings, careening into angry, desperate cacophony, only to settle right back down to a smooth, languid sizzle, like Dean Martin on a mean bender in Barstow. In person, they are shy, diffident and intelligent, easy to be around. Not very rock-star-ish at all. They'll have to work on that. Steve, Barry, Eric, Warren and Adam and I discuss work, life and death, in no particular order.

PCP: Do you purposely write songs in a morose voice, or does it just happen that way when you sit down to write?

Steve: It's my voice. Do you really find it morose? I've always been drawn to the hopeless, the sad, the melodramatic, the impotent, the tragic.

Adam: I don't get where the morose thing came into play with this band. Once a homeless man rattled a cup full of change at us in China Town and Steve said, "No thanks ... I already have money"

PCP: What bands do you cite as musical influences?

Steve: Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Scott Walker, and whatever else I happen to be into at the time.

Eric: They aren't bands, but I would include George Martin, Cole Porter, Brian Wilson, Willie Mitchell, George Gershwin, Jess Stacy, Bill Evans ...

PCP: How do you feel about being compared to Nick Cave, the Tindersticks and others of that ilk?

Steve: As for Tindersticks, they're probably the last current band to have made a real mark on me. Among my favorite songs: “City Sickness,” “A Night In,” “Mistakes,” “Desperate Man.” I actually discovered Nick Cave by being compared to him. I wanted to find out if the comparison was a compliment or an insult so I asked my bassist, Barry, if he knew who Nick Cave was. He loaned me Tender Prey, which was then the current album. (The comparison turned out to be a compliment.) I especially like the albums Your Funeral My Trial through The Good Son, and his version of “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” is one of the best things I've ever heard. So how do I feel about being compared to these bands? I can certainly think of worse bands to be compared to.

PCP: It is a pity that Cave already recorded "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," because it would seem to be a perfect cover for you guys to play, don't you think? You do play some really interesting covers.

Steve: Thanks. Sometimes it's hard to find covers that are relatively untouched. I used to do “In The Ghetto” and “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” before I knew much about Nick Cave. Back then I wanted to cover Hot Chocolate's “Emma” until I found out the Sisters of Mercy did it, and fairly recently I'd been wanting to take a crack at “Is That All There Is” but P.J. Harvey beat me to it. Still there's plenty to pick from.

Warren: We've doing more covers and I think those have influenced us. We're always learning a Tom Jones or Paul Anka, or Marty Robbins or Engelbert Humperdinck song to throw in the set. I think we would all love to hear an orchestra behind us on a lot of the tunes. Eric: Do you know any orchestras available cheap?

PCP: Have you ever considered doing a record of all covers. like Cave's “Kicking Against The Pricks” or Scott Walker's Jacques Brel recordings?

Eric: Actually, we've talked about creating another live project along those lines. If that ever happens more could grow out of it; time will tell.

Steve: Yeah I'd love to put a show together with just covers but I don't think it's quite time for that yet. There's a real art to picking and doing covers. I'm not sure people always appreciate that.

PCP: Would you like it if people acknowledged the less obvious comparisons to Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, even Alex Harvey?

Steve: Every time we go into the studio I play Tom Jones' “I Who Have Nothing” for the engineer and say, ‘Make me sound like that.’ They never do. The incompetence in this town is staggering. I really love Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdink, Glen Campbell, late Elvis, Jacques Brel, Jimmy Scott, Nina Simone, Lester Young, etc... What these people have in common is their ability to move me. But ultimately these comparisons don't really matter very much. My only real goal is to make music that has value to me, whatever that means.

PCP: Speaking of Glen Campbell, our friend Chris says that his favorite Cuba Las Vegas song, "Lady of Amazing Disappointment," is pure early ‘70s AM radio 'Mellow Gold' Campbell. Do you agree with this, and was it an intentional note you meant to hit when writing it?

Steve: “Lady ...” wasn't really planned, but I guess you could say it's our own, somewhat twisted, take on Jimmy Webb.

PCP: When you play the song live, you often say it was written about your local parochial school or something to that effect, but the lyrics are mostly about various women in your life, from an ex-wife or lover to a daughter who doesn't appear to live with you anymore. Do you not like to reveal the backstory of your songs to the listener? Are you uncomfortable with the emotions you write about?

Steve: The characters in my songs are usually caricatures of myself. So although I have plenty of personal material to draw from, most of the time there's no real exact story behind the songs, just ideas, feelings, and a little dramatic license which hopefully add up to something.

PCP: Steve, do you mind talking about (L.A. punk icon) Rik L Rik? He was a close friend of yours and he died a few weeks ago. How did he influence and inform your musical life?

Steve: Rik was my best friend for the 10 or 11 years I knew him. I've yet to really fathom the enormous impact his death has had and will continue to have on me. When I'd write a song, think of a joke, or figure out how to tell the story of something that had just happened to me, it was often with him in mind as my audience. I have no one to replace him. He influenced me a lot, hipped me to Lou Reed's Berlin, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate, Baudelaire, Bertrand Russell .... knowing him made me a better singer and song writer. One of the last times we were together, before he got sick, was a drunken evening at my girlfriend's with Rik and his girlfriend. He wanted to know if I'd be the best man at his wedding, and if he could record “Lady of Amazing Disappointment” with his band The Celestials. My answers were yes, and no. He also wanted to know just what, exactly, “Lady” was about. I put on some Nina Simone and he told me to take it off, he wanted to hear the Sex Pistols. We were drunk and he had six months to live, but all we knew at the time was that we were drunk.

PCP: Yeah, Rik got me more into Leonard Cohen too, when I was pretty young. I saw him play "Bird On A Wire" at an acoustic show in Huntington Beach and I remembered that I already owned the record and dug it out of the back of my stacks. It's never been anywhere but up front ever since. You've been recording new material. How do the new songs differ from the older material? The ones I've heard live sound more jazzy, in an early Lounge Lizards sense.

Warren: The group is writing as a whole more, rather than Steve bringing a song in and us finding parts for it. We've been writing by committee a bit more, and writing on a piano or drums is much different than writing on the acoustic. Not to knock your guitar playing, Steve, but I think that Eric and I have a very broad chord vocabulary between us and that leads to more complex or 'jazzy' sounds. Plus, having Adam in the band has given us a whole new set of rhythms to work with and that can pull things in new directions.

Eric: There's more collaboration, different influences coming into play, taking it further down the lounge road.

Warren: I don't really think that the new stuff is all that different. With the first album we definitely developed a ‘Cuba Las Vegas’ sound, and I think we still have that vibe. But I could be wrong. It's very hard to be objective about your own music.

PCP: I'm very impressed with the musical abilities of the entire band, but in particular I love Warren's guitar playing.

Steve: Yeah, this band is really good. Recently at practice they were jamming on something jazzy and I was standing there with my guitar, in front of the mic, and I realized there was nothing I could do to add to the song. So I just stood there and listened. Pretty soon they'll realize I'm holding them back. One of the greatest things about Warren's playing is his versatility. Not many guitar players in LA can play any of the stuff he does, let alone all of it, from Glen Campbell to P.J. Harvey.

Adam: Warren is 100% raw talent ... you won't find a hipper guitar player.

PCP: The other night when we were talking about doing this interview, I described the act of writing as akin to a certain very specific and intrusive sex act; worth doing but at the same time sort of harrowing and painful. Do you feel the same way or is enjoyable for you? The writing part, I mean, not the ass play.

Steve: That really depends. Sometimes writing is inspiration, effortless, a release and ultimately a joy. Sometimes writing is all I can do to ease some great pain. And sometimes coming up with those last few words, or that last verse that says what I mean to say with out sounding stupid or being cliché can be torture.

PCP: Where do you think the band is heading? I consider you the best unsigned band in Los Angeles. Do you want the trappings of a traditional record deal and touring? Do you plan on music being your career?

Steve: Well yeah, recording and playing, that's pretty much all there is. Though I can't really imagine it, I'd love to earn a living at this chosen profession of mine. I don't think you have to worry about finding a new ‘best unsigned band in Los Angeles’ anytime soon, not if I have anything to do with it. Things tend not to work out for me.

Eric: I can imagine it for you, if you'd like.

PCP: Well, at least you'll always have something to write about. Your music has a certain, shall we say, jaundiced view of relationships with women. Is it difficult for you to sustain a normal relationship? There's such a sense of bitterness , some but not all of it directed inwardly.

Steve: Bitter? I don't think I'm as bitter as I used to be. I used to be so bitter I couldn't see straight; used to say, ‘If it weren't for the bitterness I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning.’ Now I get out of bed 'cause my back starts to hurt if I stay in too long. Suffice it to say, I do have a lot of trouble sustaining any kind of normal relationship with women.

PCP: Lastly, do you enjoy the process of being interviewed, other than as a necessary tool for exposure? Is there any catharsis in the act of self-explanation, or is this dreadful for you?

Steve: The catharsis is in the music itself. Taking it apart is dangerous. Things tend to suffer when you examine them too closely. Music is best when it somehow becomes more than the sum of its parts. If you take it apart, you risk making it less than it was, reducing it to the sum of its parts. I suppose if we ever get to the point where I'm doing lots of interviews, they'll become pretty dreadful: just repeating stock answers to the same questions in city after city while trying to feign interest. But right now this is new enough for me that, if anything, I'm a little overwhelmed by having to put so much in to words.

PCP: You've handled it very well. Time for a Scotch.

Eric: Make mine Bourbon.

Cuba Las Vegas’ music can be found on mp3.com, as well as through their own website.