The Heights' Local Music Spotlight gives you the heads-up on some of the most promising up-and-coming artists from the Boston College and greater Boston music scenes. Just last week, I had the chance to sit down with the one-man experimental indie-folk collective, Boy Without God, a.k.a. Gabriel Birnbaum. Birnbaum, a seasoned musician and A&S '10, has toured numerous times and played with many bands in the Northeast. He recently played at The Middle East in Boston, opening for Former Ghosts.
Ben Shanbrom: How long have you been playing music and what got you into it?
Gabriel Birnbaum: I started playing music when I think I was 10; my older brother and sister are musicians. My brother is a jazz pianist in New York right now and was sort of a prodigy when he was younger. My sister is a classical cellist, so I grew up hearing music all the time. Because my brother was so good, I was like, "I'm not gonna play music. I'm gonna be a sports star!" I really wanted to be a baseball star, and I got progressively worse and worse at baseball as I got older until I quit. Anyway, I went to school in Brookline which had a mandatory [music] program, so I started playing clarinet when I was 10, and then I switched to saxophone because I didn't like clarinet. When I was in eighth grade, I got really into sax playing a solo on maybe a Steely Dan song.
I got into jazz band in high school and was really militant about jazz. It was the only thing I listened to. All other music was s-t, I wouldn't let anyone play rock music; I was such a jerk. I think I used to make my friends feel bad about listening to rock, and then of course, I got into rock music. My friend played me Wilco in his car, and I remember being like, "Hey, this is kind of cool." So I asked my friend to burn me some new rock music, you know, Elliot Smith, Pavement. I taught myself guitar five years ago and started singing really badly and then gradually got a little better, but still, I'm one of those singers that's not really a singer. You know, it's that Silver Jews line, "all my favorite singers couldn't sing."
How would you describe the kind of music you make? I noticed a bit of a stripped-down acoustic vibe to your recordings, but you also had a lot of neat instrumental layers you wouldn't expect to hear in this style of music.
Yeah, there's some glockenspiel in there, and since I've played the saxophone for the longest time, and it's by far the instrument I'm best on, when I'm recording, I use it a lot in the background. I love using a lot of layers in my music, so one of the most fun things for me when I started making these first recordings was to keep adding more and more and more stuff until it sounded full. That's a lot of what I do when I'm recording and arranging for a band. A lot of the stuff I listen to is based around acoustic guitar with that quieter, mellow sound, but I also like really dramatic things with big climaxes, so the final thing winds up being half-way between the two. And there's definitely also a lot of influence from the free jazz I used to play.
I was actually in a soul band for a while, which just got signed to Virgin. I was just a sad man in the horn section, so touring and playing the same thing every night gets a little boring. Just after a while it becomes difficult to have fun doing the same thing, no matter how good the music is. I'm pretty solid in my decision. I still play with those guys on tour and played on their Virgin debut. It's nice to have just a little taste of it, but even though it's a huge struggle, it's more satisfying in the end to do my own thing.
BS: You are pretty much a one man band, how does that translate to a live setting?
It's kind of hard, [but] like I was saying, I like recording with a lot of instruments. So when I end up playing live, it's always hard to figure out what to do. I play a lot of shows solo, because that's the natural thing to do. The band I played with last night was a couple electric guitars, a drummer, a horn section, and a couple of background singers, which is the biggest band I've ever played with.
BS: What is your songwriting process like?
I've tried pretty much everything I can think of because the thing about anything creative is as soon as you find something you think works once, it will never work again, or at least not for a really long time. That's how it is for me any way. It's like how when you're not looking for women, suddenly you get all these girls hitting on you, and when you're out trying, nothing, nothing at all. When I'm trying to write a song and thinking, "Ahh, I wish I could write music now," nothing ever comes, but when I'm just doing things, then the song just appears out of nowhere.
BS: On your Myspace you promote your CD using the Radiohead "pay what you want" approach, how has that worked out?
I mean, it doesn't work unless you're Radiohead. They have one of the biggest audiences of any band out there right now, so when they put something out people say, "Oh, a Radiohead album, of course I'll pay for that." I mean, that model doesn't really carry over to bands that have smaller audiences. I use them like business cards; I'll go up to people and be like, "Oh, you seem pretty cool, have a CD!" I don't really think you can count on music anymore to pay for your life, unless you're playing cocktail piano.
BS: What are your plans for the future?
I'm graduating in December, so I'll be finally free of the shackles of college. My plans are to maybe move to New York, because most of my friends live there. The music scene in Boston is kind of fractured. It's mostly just small circles of friends who go to each other's shows. So pretty much every local show you go to, you know exactly which 30 or 40 people are gonna be there. So I may do some writing and playing in New York or I will go on an indefinite tour if I can round up the right people. That might actually happen this summer, some of the people I played with last night are down, but I need to figure out what would be the best band to take on something like that. I kind of have a wander-lust right now, I just want to go out on the road and meet new people. I'm also making another record which I should be recording in about a month.
For more information on Boy Without God and to hear some of Gabriel's music, check out his Myspace page at www.myspace.com/boywithoutgod.
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