We now join the Beulah interview, already in progress...

Splendid: When Your Heartstrings Break seems to be a more subdued album than Handsome Western States -- it has a less obtrusive sound. Is that because you recorded it mostly in spaces where you were working around a lot of "ambient noise", or were trying to avoid making a lot of noise (i.e. in the lobby of Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, workplace of bandmember Pat Noel)?

Miles: I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, so much of music is accidental, really... I was setting out to make a record that would be as "hi-fi", as planned out as any record ever made. You know, like the Beatles, or whomever...Radiohead. I don't know. I guess it's just like anything -- your situation with where you're living, where you're recording, or where you are emotionally, pretty much sets the tone for the record. That's a really tough question, actually. Is it a subdued record, do you think?

Splendid: I don't mean it in a bad sense. Just more natural, I guess.

Miles: It's...natural. Organic, maybe.

Splendid: More assured, too. Sort of, "We are doing exactly what we want to do here at all times."

Miles: I agree, I think it felt like a natural record. It felt really organic. It felt like what we were doing was exactly what we should've been doing, and had we forced it... I think in the beginning we were trying to do other things. We were trying to make it too hi-fi, trying to go above and beyond our limited resources, and I think we finally realized that's absurd -- just use what you have, and do the best you can, and hopefully the songs'll shine through and everything will be all right.

Splendid: Do you find the music evolving further as you perform it on the road, to fit the scale of your tour? Much of the advance press I've read on your shows speculates on how you'll reproduce the album's sound.

Miles: We've tried to do the songs justice -- we don't want to be so scaled down that we're just guitar, bass and drums like a power trio. They evolved mostly in the studio. The way the songs evolve on the road is that you become more tired, but you also become more comfortable and familiar with everybody's playing, so you can compensate for mistakes and all those kind of things. That's the great thing about becoming a live band, I think.

Splendid: Is Beulah one of those bands that writes on the road, or do you stick to the songs you've already got?

Miles: No, I haven't picked up a guitar and tried anything other than (the songs we've got) -- I'm just concentrating on playing live. I have the whole next record written anyway, it's pretty much done, and I have other ones I'm working on. I'll just go home, and record on my dictaphone, and hopefully a lot of songs will come out when I get home. I haven't really thought about it, though, because I'm trying to just concentrate on playing good shows. All the other stuff...like I said, it's already done, so I'm not too worried about it.

Splendid: Since you've got the Elephant 6 label attached to you, and they're such an incestuous -- well, that's a bad word --

Miles: Right.

Splendid: You know, such a free-flowing, collaborative community... Do you have any collaborations planned with other Elephant 6ers?

Miles: No, not really, actually...I like hearing them and buying their records and I enjoy them all very much, but not really. I mean, I like to work with Robert (Schneider, of the Apples in Stereo), because I think he's a recording genius, and I love working with him -- he's easy to work with. That's about it. It's kind of nice feeling like we're out on an island, y'know, in San Francisco. It's unfortunate that too much closeness causes too many unfair comparisons, really, and that's something we're a bit wary of.

We're fortunate to be associated with them, and we're also ecstatic that we're associated with them; they're obviously one of the most important pop movements of this decade. But at the same time it's sometimes a bit disconcerting to be pigeonholed.

Splendid: So maybe having their logo on your CDs means people will expect something of you that, eventually, they're not going to get?

Miles: Yeah, totally. On When Your Heartstrings Break alone, some people have said "It's not psychedelic enough". Well, that's because we're not a psychedelic band. But people actually had the gall to think it should be more psychedelic, which is absurd. We do what we do, and fair or succeed at what we do on our own merits, not on what other people expect from us because of a logo. And Elephant 6, as far as I'm concerned, represents far more wide-ranging musical tastes than just psychedelia.

Splendid: Yeah, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Miles: Exactly. That's what I think. And when I hear that the Olivias (OTC) are doing some country music, or doing an entire electronic record, or somebody's gonna do a whole ambient piece or what have you, I find that very exciting.

Splendid: Since you mention broader tastes...is Beulah one of those bands that listens to a lot of other people's music to kill time on the road?

Miles: We're not even listening to the radio at all. Pure silence, except one day we listened to the oldies station. That was about it.

Splendid: I imagine it seems a bit like work anyway.

Miles: Yeah, and the stereo's not working, and we just want to sleep.

Splendid: What have your audiences been like? With When Your Heartstrings Break's popularity, are there a lot of people coming to shows just to see Beulah?

Miles: I think they're here to see us and the Apples. All I can gauge it by is that we've had a really good crowd response. A lot of people know who we are, which has been great. It's been surprising -- last time we were out here there were maybe twenty five people who knew who we were, and now we actually see people bobbing their heads and singing (along to) our songs.

Splendid: It strikes me as an unusual bill (Dressy Bessy, Beulah, the Apples in Stereo), just because it's sort of odd for me to want to see all three bands on the bill. Usually there's a stinker in there somewhere.

Miles: Yeah, I think there's an equal amount of people here to see all of us -- they're probably all here to see all of us at once and they're all pretty excited that we all came through on one bill and they didn't have to suffer through something they didn't want to see. It's certainly a symbiotic relationship, and it has worked out for the best.

Splendid: Have you been happy with the band's performance on the tour?

Miles: Yeah, except for Reckless --

Splendid: I think you're cheating yourself there...

Miles: You're too kind...and except for our radio station gig. Except for those, I think we've all been overjoyed with every set. We had one bad show, or what we considered a bad show, but I think it's been good. I've had a great time. This is the best tour we've ever had. It's so much fun, it's like a huge vacation. A great vacation.

Splendid: Do you see spending a significant portion of the rest of your life on Beulah? Or what else is down the road?

Miles: Well, hopefully we'll just keep making music until we start making bad music and then we'll have the wherewithall...or not the wherewithall, the sense to quit. Y'know? I'd love to make records for the rest of my life, but if I'm making records and I feel that I'm torturing the listeners, I'll hopefully stop.

Splendid: Hopefully it'll be a long time before that happens.

Miles: Yeah, well, I think we've got a couple more albums in us, and then we might just drift off...and hopefully have added our two cents.

Splendid: So, have you started getting calls from major labels?

Miles: Well, we hear what all bands hear -- you know, that people like you, or whatever -- but it doesn't really mean much. Major labels don't really have that much credence in this day and age. I mean, what's the point? As an indie band, if you get a 50/50 deal with an indie label, and you sell a certain number of thousand records, you're doing fine and you can sustain a certain lifestyle and actually play music, whereas...it's a bit worrisome to think that you could make a record that you think is really good and it'd just get shelved by a major label. So yeah, there's been interest, but...well, put it this way: if someone offered me a million dollars, I'd be an idiot to turn it down. I'd just be an idiot. Of course I'd take it! And I don't consider it selling out -- I consider it cashing in. I've put a lot of years into this and I think I should take the money, but at the same time I certainly wouldn't do it for nothing just for the sake of being involved with a major label, because all the stories I've heard have been horror stories...

Splendid: Well, I'm sure that the majors look at the enthusiasm for you, and for the Apples, and the greed just comes out in force. Like "we want them so bad, we've gotta get a piece of that"...

Miles: We're happy right now. It's very insular and nice. It's warm. It's like the womb. It'd be scary to get out of it.

Splendid: Do you -- personally, or with Beulah -- have a lot of older recorded material that we're going to wind up seeing on the shelves some day? A bunch of cassette-only albums that'll come out as one big CD in a few years' time?

Miles: Not really; there've been a few bonus tracks that we've released in Japan that no-one's ever heard, and that's about it.

Splendid: Oh, man, there goes another chunk of my income...

Miles: Yeah, there's a couple of bonus tracks. We did two for When Your Heartstrings Break -- there's an original that I wrote called "All Points North", and then a cover of a 3Ds song called "Sunken Treasure", and then a couple on Handsome Western States that we did, same sort of thing. The Japanese are really fond of bonus tracks; they somehow make the disc more worthwhile to the Japanese consumer, so we have to sometimes make bonus tracks. Other than that, there's a 7" single we put out called Small Cattle Drive in a Snowstorm -- there were about 1000 of them, and they're gone now. We're gonna keep putting stuff out as often as possible -- this industry standard of a record every two years just seems awful.

Splendid: Yeah, if you wanted to do six in a year, that'd be great. Be like Bill Laswell or Palace or something.

Miles: I wish we could. I wish I could be that prolific but I'm not. I would like to at least get 'em out every...year and few months, year and six months tops.

Splendid: You mentioned getting online and checking out some of the reviews, which hopefully included ours --

Miles: Yeah, it did. I don't own a computer, so it's really difficult for me to get online. I haven't really been doing it too much -- I do what every novice computer person does and just sit down and see what comes up...I need to buy a computer, because I like them -- I certainly don't have anything against technology. I just can't afford one.

Splendid: Yeah, I remember when we were thinking over becoming associated with Insound, and I saw you guys were doing their showcase at SXSW, and I kind of thought, "Well, if they're hooked up with Beulah, they've gotta be okay."

Miles: Wow, yeah...

Splendid: So see, you influenced our decision and you never knew.

Miles: Insound is the site you can get to a bunch of magazines from, right? Yeah, somebody showed me that site, because I was trying to get to a zine, and they said "This is a shortcut. Go here."

Splendid: Not that I'm pimping them or anything.

Miles: I need to get a computer.

Splendid: Do you think the net has really changed music forever, for artists and fans -- just the accessibility and the fact that there really aren't any collectors' items any more?

Miles: Well, I've read all the things that everyone else has read, about MP3s and Liquid Audio and to be honest, I have no clue what's the best way to approach any of it. From what I understand, some bands are being downloaded 300,000 times, and I don't even know who they are...so I guess it's helping some people out. I don't think we're in that ballpark, not even close.

Splendid: Well, we've got a track of yours on Splendid's Boombox, and it's usually among the top 30 sound files for the week.

Miles: Wow...I had no idea. They download the whole song?

Splendid: No, it's streamed. It just plays, and the person listening doesn't get to keep it. That way we don't feel like we're screwing you guys. You know, if you can listen to a song at a certain level of quality it helps you to make a decision -- do you want to buy this or not? If the file's really high-quality, why buy the album?

Miles: Yeah, from an advertising angle that's terriffic...

At this point, Thaddeus Rudd from Sugar Free Records intervenes to make certain we're not boring the living hell out of his artist. Miles kindly tells Thaddeus that he's having a good time with the interview, and invites us to ask him more questions as Thaddeus takes his leave. This might not strike you as a particularly big deal, but usually an artist takes this opportunity to end the interview.

Miles: You guys can ask me whatever you want. I'm in no hurry. I'm very happy to be in an air conditioned room, actually.

Splendid: No doubt...

Jason: So how'd you guys get hooked up with Elephant 6?

Miles: It was just an accident really...a friend of mine, Kevin, was in NY with a tape of ours, and gave it to the Apples, and I think it was serendipitous, one of those happy misfortunes -- the Apples popped it in their cassette player in their van and said "Oh wow, this is good," and gave me a call that week, and that was it. Because we only sent one other tape out, and that was to Merge and we never heard back.

Splendid: I bet they're kicking themselves now...

Miles: Probably not...they have so many great bands, and they're doing fine on their own. Maybe they didn't like it, or didn't listen to it, but it doesn't matter. We were lucky enough to get hooked up with a lot of wonderful people and we're very happy. I'd have loved to have been on Merge, too, 'cos I like Merge very nice as well.

Splendid: Miles, thanks very much.

Miles: I'm glad you liked the record, and thanks for the nice review. It was a good (review), wasn't it? It gets hard to remember...

Splendid: Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Miles: We've had a lot of nice, positive reviews...we're just trying to make a nice little record, and all we want to do next is make an even better one. I like the new songs a lot, I think they're pretty good...I think we need to step it up a little bit, make it a little bigger and badder and better...

Jason: I love your website. Who does your design?

Miles: This woman named Belinda...yeah, she is good. She just told us she'd do one, and again I wouldn't have known how to get to step one... Thank God for Belinda...