Splendid: Yeah? I'm interested in this idea that you didn't want to learn other people's songs, and you felt like that would pollute your process. Does that extend to listening to music?

Quentin Stoltzfus: No, definitely not. I've listened to everything I can get my ears on.

Splendid: So what kind of music gets you going?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Well, let me just look through my pile, my current pile of listening material... which I've actually had for a long time. I have a Mississippi John Hurt record which I love a lot. Dylan, John Fahey... Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, which I love. I've got a Sandy Bull record. George Harrison, Sun Ra, Kraftwerk, Gang of Four, Faust, Harry Partch, Talking Heads...

Splendid: So, a broad range of ...

Quentin Stoltzfus: Chambers Brothers, Velvet Underground... I like so many different things. Lionel Hampton, Little Richard, Sly and the Family Stone. I love everything. To isolate it to one or two bands is really, really hard for me to do. I guess in the past couple of years, I've been listening to a lot of Plastic Ono Band. What else? All sorts of stuff. The Feelies.

Splendid: Oh, I love the Feelies. No one ever talks about them anymore.

Quentin Stoltzfus: I don't understand what happened to those guys. They were so great, and I love them.

Splendid: Plus it seems like we're recycling everything else from that period. Why not The Feelies? When are we going to get to them?

Quentin Stoltzfus: It would be really good if we did get to them, because I really, really dig them a lot. I think they're worth it... and they're such a weird band. That's what I love about them. They're so bizarre. And so fast and so different from everything else. And actually, also, one band that's really huge for me is The Clean.

Splendid: Oh yeah.

Quentin Stoltzfus: They're huge for me.

Splendid: Me too.

Quentin Stoltzfus: I actually finally started learning songs. After I started writing my own...

Splendid: You feel like you're strong enough in your own work that you can be exposed to other people's stuff now?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, I feel like I've developed my own voice. I've been playing music for 12 years now. I've had a lot of time to develop my own voice and my own style. I feel like I'm able to move on and learn other people's styles.

Splendid: Have you ever been to an art exhibit, and you'll have the first room, the early stuff, where the artist is trying on different styles, and then you move on to the later ones, and the artist's work starts to look more like him/her own? Sounds like you did it the opposite way.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, maybe -- that's a very interesting point.

Splendid: Tell me about Azusa Plane. What do you take away from that experience that affects what you're doing now?

Quentin Stoltzfus: I learned a lot about sound and improvisation with that band. It taught me how to be comfortable with not exactly knowing what was going to happen next. You know, with people playing music. And I definitely still have that element in my own music. When we play live, there's always space for us to go off and improvise and invent the songs as they're happening live. I think that's really exciting. It doesn't allow it to get to the point of being a jam band, because I wouldn't say it's like that, absolutely no limitations, because that's ridiculous. There's kind of a general constraint, but I'm teaching the band songs now. I've got a new line-up together for this record. But I'm teaching them songs, and I say, "Now this is the part where we just do whatever we want."

Splendid: Maybe this would be a good time to talk about the people who are in your band.

Quentin Stoltzfus: The people that are in the band now... Mike Walker -- Mickey Walker has always been with me. He's been with me for the last three or four years. He plays bass. And then Ryan Cobb and Paul Cobb, who are in a band called Mad Action, which used to be called Ty Cobb. Ryan plays guitar and Paul plays drums. And they're really fantastic. They're just great. Their band is really amazing.

Splendid: These are different people than are on the record, aren't they?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, yeah, it's impossible for me to get the people that play on the record to tour with me. I almost always have to get different musicians, which is fine by me. I have so many friends who play music, and I love their music, so it's fun to kind of constantly be switching around, even though it's kind of daunting, you know, the idea of teaching a new drummer all the songs again. I've kind of learned to embrace it and to really enjoy it, because it's always different. It's like getting a new band, but it's not a new band. It's still the same songs, but interpreted through different minds. It's really cool. I like to watch the songs develop in that way.

Splendid: Yeah, it sounds really interesting. So, this is Mazarin's third album.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yes.

Splendid: It sounds like, early on, you had a pretty massive, out-of-left-field success with Mazarin. Single of the Week in England and all kinds of stuff. Did that surprise you?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Totally. The record was released in the fall, Watch It Happen. I had just finished it and played it for a few people in Philly. I got these insane responses from them. And I was, like, oh, maybe everyone responds like this all the time. You know? And then I got the NME Single of the Week. From there, it was just like a rocket. It just took off. I really wasn't prepared for it. I went from making four-track recordings in my bedroom to having dinner with labels in London and discussing signing me. Tons of labels. And you know, being in NME and seeing my picture next to Prince and Biggie Smalls and things like that. It was just bizarre, a really crazy experience.

Splendid: Must have been kind of fun, though.

Quentin Stoltzfus: I just was not prepared for it. I think that's probably why I took so much time to do this record. The first two records were back to back. I went out on a big tour, and I wasn't ready for that either. I just decided, it was like, all right, I've got to see where I stand. I'm going to take a little break and relax a little bit and get my head around this thing and go from there.

But, yeah, it was a shock. I tried to enjoy myself, but it was very hard. I was meeting all these people and not trusting them. I didn't want to do business with people I didn't trust. It was just a lot of stuff that I didn't know about. It was very daunting.

Splendid: How would you say your current album fits into the continuum -- or how does it differ from the others?

Quentin Stoltzfus: I would say... it's probably easier to talk about the similarities. There's still the noise element, which is something that I think I'll always have in any kind of music. It always seems to find its way into whatever I'm doing. I don't know why or how. That's really, in my opinion, the only thing that's similar. I think it's completely different from the other two records. There are things that I do, techniques that I've developed over the course of making these records, that I continue to use. Like, I do a lot of strange timings. I do a lot of things on threes and fives instead of fours, which most people do. And just dragging out vocal lines with longer holds on them -- holding either a chord or a note in the song longer than might be expected. That kind of thing is still in the record.

Splendid: What do you like about the three- and the five-based time signatures?

Quentin Stoltzfus: You know what? I don't even know. I think it's an element of surprise... for myself and for the listener. I just like that kind of syncopation. And, you know, rather than it being an improvised syncopation, it's more like something that's planned, because rather than doing the song in four, we're doing it in three or five. Bands like the Beatles did a lot of that. Syd Barrett does it. Neil Young. I really like the way it shapes a song. I think it makes it interesting and makes the space of the song change, to be more amorphous than linear and boxy.

Splendid: I'm not sure most people know what they're hearing when they hear that.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, I'm pretty sure most people don't. Even the musicians that I play with, when I ask them to join, they're like, oh yeah, this will be a breeze. They're easy pop songs. And then they start learning them and they're like, what's going on with these things? I have to sit down and kind of explain them to them. Sometimes I'm not even very aware of what's going on in the songs, either. In the past, Sean Byrne has been the go-to guy for communicating to people what's going on with the songs, because I don't really analyze my songs. I just learn them. Basically, most of my songs, I sit down and I improvise a version of the song, then I go back and I learn it. Sometimes it takes me, you know, a while to learn the song.

Splendid: It sounds like you have a really interesting songwriting process.

Quentin Stoltzfus: It's pretty weird. It's very different from most people I know. And I'm not very prolific either. It takes me forever to produce the songs.

Splendid: But essentially, you hear things in your head and then you go home and try to commit them to tape...

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah. I hum notes... I hum little melodies, and then, basically... it's a pretty long process. I'll sit down and start playing around with them. Normally I record from the very beginning, because sometimes literally the first time I play a song, it's done. The structure is there. Sometimes it takes longer for that kind of magic. I don't know how else you can describe it. But sometimes I can sense when a song is in a suitable structure or suitable form for me. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel happy. Sometimes it takes years. The song "Louise" on the record, I wrote three years ago and had all these other versions that I just wasn't satisfied with. I didn't like the way that I played it or it was too wordy and I didn't like the way the lyrics flowed. And then finally it came down to using another song. And I was like, "Wait a minute. I've got this song. I really like it. I'm going to take another stab at it." And I did, and it came out really well. That happens a lot, where I have songs on the back burner for years and then try to rework them. Sometimes it works very well, just to keep working on things.

Splendid: I like that song, "Louise".

Quentin Stoltzfus: Oh, thanks.

Splendid: So you use all these really cool sounds, and some of them are sort of hard to put your finger on and figure out exactly what they are. Are there bells of some sort in "The New American Apathy"?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yes. We borrowed these bells. There's a guy next door to our studio who is a classical musician. He has all of these classical instruments. He's got some hand bells and a melodeon. He's got six grand pianos. He's got a pipe organ. He works on pipe organs. It's crazy. He's got this massive collection of instruments. We went over one day and borrowed some bells from him. We took them back to the studio and just started messing around with them. I just played them live, basically, with a drum stick on the bell itself, and then we did another track of that and ran them through delay. We did all sorts of stuff to it. It's actually something we used a lot on the record. I think it's in almost every song.

Splendid: Really? I love the way that they interact with the guitars on that song, because they make the guitar sound like it's ringing, too, in a way.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, it creates a bunch of overtones in the song that generally don't happen. Brian (McTear) and I really liked the effect. I've always used bells, like sleigh bells, but never to this extent -- never as a hook. That's kind of how Brian describes them. He says, "The bells are a hook in these songs." People hear them but they don't hear them. There's something about them that just kind of sucks you into a song. And it creates a really interesting landscape in the song. I wish I could replicate that live, but --

Splendid: You can't do it?

Quentin Stoltzfus: I think I could if I had a person to play the bells, but I can't afford to take them on tour.

Splendid: The only other song that I can think of that has sleigh bells on it is "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by the Stooges, and I'm pretty sure they don't do them live, either.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Oh, yeah... I played sleigh bells live for a long time.

Splendid: What about the lyrics to that song? It seems like it's about being oblivious and being lied to, which is a very topical kind of lyric. How important are lyrics to your songs, and at what point do they come into the process?

Quentin Stoltzfus: At different points. Sometimes I'll write lyrics a few years before I write a song, and other times I'll write lyrics after the song is already recorded. Most times it happens somewhere in the demo process, but a lot of these songs I kind of wrote in the studio. "Another One Goes By" was written in the studio. I had the first line and then I wrote the rest of it. "12 to 6" was written in the studio. For "American Apathy," I had that one line and basically put it to a song. "We're Already There" was written in the studio. I think lyrically -- I used to keep a really extensive notebook of lyrical ideas, and I found that it got overwhelming to keep it organized and to go through it. I've kind of stopped doing that, at least for the time being. I still make little notes if I come up with something I think is clever. Now it's more about me with my ideas floating around in my head, just kind of waiting for them to all come together at the right time. They all just kind of come out. I have all these complex ideas that I try to tie together and it's always very taxing for me to do it. I think it's easier with this new way of doing it that I've been trying. I like it.

Splendid: It sounds like you're really tapped into your subconscious, the way you're doing it now.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Oh, definitely. Everything for me has moved in that direction. I'm trying to not be as conscious of it, to really find out what's going on in the back closets of my mind, I guess. I don't really know how to describe it.

Splendid: "Another One Goes By" is my new favorite song.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Oh, thank you.

Splendid: It's so good in ways that I can't even put into words. Did you know right away that it was going to be a good one?

Quentin Stoltzfus: I don't know. I guess. I always kind of judge when the songs are good, based on the reaction of the musicians I'm with. Sean Byrne immediately said, "This is my favorite song you've ever done." And I'm like, "Oh, okay, whatever." And then Brian was like "This is a good song." And I said, "Oh thanks." I don't know. I think I have a very bad gauge for that. For instance, I had "Wheats" on the scrap pile. It was kind of in the same position on this first record, where I needed another song for the album. I was like, "I don't know. I don't really have another song. Well, I've got this one, but I don't really like it that much." And I played it for him and he was like, "Whoa, that's awesome. You've got to use it." And that seems to happen. I don't think I'm that good at deciding whether songs are good or not. I just play them for people and let them decide. But I guess I had a sense of it -- I knew when I was writing it that I wanted it to be a straight-up pop song and simple and pretty and nice. Yeah, I don't know. I like it a lot, too.

Splendid: What's that first line, "Kiss me, your skin..."?

Quentin Stoltzfus: "Kissing your skin your skeleton pierces my daydreams."

Splendid: It's about untouchable ideals and unrealizable love?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Is that what it's about?

Splendid: I don't know. I was trying to figure out what it's about...because it's got this mood that's very wistful and I couldn't figure out how the lyrics related to what I was hearing.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what that was about. I wrote the lines when I was laying in bed with my girlfriend. I don't know -- it's just what came out. It's so weird for me to analyze my own lyrics. A lot of times they're all these disparate ideas that I try to bring together; they have such broad meanings for me, and they're pretty intensely personal. I don't know. Sometimes the subject matter is about many different things. I could explain every single one of my songs and say that it's about 20 different people and name each person, but I really like universal lyrics. You try to find universal truths in pop rock, I guess. I couldn't really say what that's song's about. You probably would know better than I would. I also think it's one of those things -- songs have different meanings to different people. That's one of the things that's special about songs. They always mean something different. Songs that I think are about one thing are about completely different subjects.

Splendid: Yeah. You also do a couple of songs that are more purely rhythmic, like "Schroeder/inger" and "Kenyan Heat Wave." Is the process different for those?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Those were kind of just improvised. Well, actually "Schroeder/inger" -- I don't know how to pronounce that either -- was something that me and Brian were experimenting with. We had this piece of equipment in the studio -- it's like a filter. And we ran the -- you're the first person I've told this to -- we ran the drum sounds from "Another One Goes By" through this filter, and then we started layering on top of that. It's the exact drum sounds, distorted. That was something that we basically did the same process with that as with "American Apathy".

"Kenyan Heat Wave" and "We're Already There" were completely improvised, unedited improvisations at my studio. That was done with me, Steve Keller, Kurt Heasley and Mickey Walker. We did add some Fender Rhodes onto that, and of course the lyrics to "We're Already There" were added later, but the basics of the song were completely improvised.

Did that answer your question?

Splendid: Oh yeah. You can just keep talking. I don't care what you say. (he laughs) I really like the density of the guitar sound in "Constellations".

Quentin Stoltzfus: That's funny, because we used two little tiny amps and it gave us the most gigantic guitar sound on the record.

Splendid: Yeah, it sounds like My Bloody Valentine.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Huh, that's neat.

Splendid: Let's see, what else do I have? You did a CD release show fairly recently? Any more live performances.

Quentin Stoltzfus: I haven't done it yet. It's on August first. (The interview was done in mid-July.)

Splendid: Oh, okay, but by the time we get this out it'll be past tense. Are you doing a fall tour?

Quentin Stoltzfus: We don't know yet. We've got a few possibilities, but nothing confirmed. We've basically planned to be in the UK and Europe in October and November. September, we'd like to go out for a couple of weeks with the band, but we're not sure which band we're going out with yet. There are a couple of offers that are popping up, but we're just kind of waiting to see what happens. And then we're going to really do some heavy touring in the spring or at the beginning of the year. We're definitely doing a lot of touring for this record.

Splendid: Usually, by the time people hear a record, musicians are onto the next thing. Are you working on something new now?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Well, this record has been done for so long; I've been setting up my studio and recording other bands there. I haven't really started working on a new record. The way that works is Brian calls me up and says, "Hey, it's time for you to write a new record," and I say, "Yeah, you're right. Let's schedule some time." I've been noodling around and writing a few little tidbits here and there, but I really haven't started to actually work on a record. That whole process is very strange, too. It takes me forever to write songs, but once I start working on them, it goes pretty quickly.

Splendid: Who are you producing?

Quentin Stoltzfus: The main band that I'm producing now is called the Bloodfeathers. I play drums with them. Basically it's two friends of mine that came into the studio to record some demos. They came out so well that we had to do something with them. Then I took it to Brian and mixed it. We've been doing some live shows. I'm trying to help them out as much as possible to get their music out there, because I think it's really good. It's totally different from Mazarin -- it sounds like a mix of George Harrison and Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead. Like their American Beauty record. It's beautiful stuff, and I like it a lot. Other than that, I've just been doing some odd projects here and there for friends of mine in town. I did basic tracks for this band Relay, which is a friend of mine's band. I just do recordings for people.

Splendid: It's kind of a cool scene, Philadelphia, isn't it?

Quentin Stoltzfus: It sure is. Right now it's really great. The same people have been playing music here for probably close to ten years. It's not like anyone is really dropping out. Nobody has a major label record deal, but everyone seems to put out music and play shows. Less frequently now, because we don't have a decent rock club in Philadelphia anymore.

Splendid: Really?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Other than Silk City, which is where we're doing the record release show. Everything else just kind of blows. But that's going to change soon. There's going to be a new club. I think it's going to be the best club in the world. I don't know. It's going to be upstairs at this bar called Johnny Brenda's. I'm not sure what they're going to call the club. It's five minutes from my house, which is another positive.

Splendid: Oh, excellent.

Quentin Stoltzfus: My world is getting smaller and smaller, which I like. So, yeah, Brian McTear lives a few blocks away from me. Mickey Walker is about four blocks away.

Splendid: Brian McTear was the one that was involved with the Burning Brides?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yes, he recorded them.

Splendid: The first one? The Fall of the Plastic Empire?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah...there's a coffee shop down the street where everyone kind of meets. It's not even that we meet there -- we just get our coffee there and when you go in, there's one of your friends getting a cup of coffee, so you end up spending two hours hanging out with him. There's so many good bands in Philly right now. People are kind of reinventing themselves. There's so much good stuff, high quality stuff happening.

Splendid: Who are some of the bands people should know about?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Well, there's Bloodfeathers and Mad Action and (to someone on his end) who else? Umm, Mike Walker is better at these kinds of questions. There's Dr. Dog, there's The Teeth, there's this whole young scene, these dudes that I don't really know, but I'm playing a few shows with them. There's so many great bands. Maybe I'll email you some.

Splendid: That'd be cool. So, Mazarin, did you get the name from that Cardinal Mazarin?

Quentin Stoltzfus: Indirectly. I was reading a book called The Island of the Day Before.

Splendid: Oh, yeah, Umberto Eco. I loved that book.

Quentin Stoltzfus: It's a great book.

Splendid: I love the whole concept.

Quentin Stoltzfus: It's great. It's beautiful. The way he writes, the imagery, is so amazing. And I love the historical fiction. You're not really sure if truth or fiction, because he does the research so well. But that was the source of the name. I read that and then I read all of the rest of his books.

Splendid: Foucault's Pendulum is really good, too.

Quentin Stoltzfus: Yeah, Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose and Travels in Hyperreality, and The Platypus, which I never finished.

Splendid: I haven't read that one.

Quentin Stoltzfus: That's tough. A friend of mine's wife had that, and I was like, "Whoa, you read that book?" and she said, "Yeah, I finished it." I was like four pages into it and I didn't get it. I put it down. It's all about semiotics and language. It's really intense. But he's wonderful.

Anyway, Mazarin was the name of character in The Island of the Day Before. I thought it sounded nice. I didn't even investigate the historical character. It was just a name that sounded good.