Crucial Interview 009: Zach Barocas

Even though the Crucial Tracks project has taken on a new life since our last interview, I plan to continue doing these more in-depth interviews. They are an awesome glimpse into the worlds of immensely talented people, that shows how much music connects us and our work, as well as shapes our lives and memories.

To date I’ve tried to include a wide range of people that do amazing things, usually in their own lane, with levels of success that don’t necessarily match the general societal ideas of “success”… to show that it’s possible to have success without being widely famous or participating in mass social media, with it’s shitty incentives that push for views (and ad revenue) through inauthentic behavior.

Truth is, you can be happy and have real success even when you set your sights lower. You are awesome and noteworthy when you are doing something you care about, really put the time in, and share authentically. By highlighting folks doing this kind of work, I hope it helps us appreciate and ultimately support more small businesses and creatives… and maybe, even encourage you to start (and share) your own adventure, doing something you love.

With all that said, let me get on to introducing our latest Crucial Tracks participant: Zach Barocas. Musician, composer, stationery shop owner, and overall great human being.

I have been familiar with Zach’s work since the 90s, through his drumming with one of my all-time favorite bands, Jawbox. One of my favorite aspects of most Jawbox songs is his drumming – it’s the key element that ties together the post-hardcore grooves with the angular, sometimes chaotic aspects of DC punk. Perfect examples of this can be heard on ”Motorist” and ”Chinese Fork Tie“:

More recently, though, my connection to Zach has been through micro.blog where I currently host my personal blog. A few years ago, I discovered Zach was also part of that community through a conversation with Patrick Rhone… and from talking to Zach, it turns out he knows Vic Lazar, as well. Such a small world! (Not to mention Zach grew up about an hour east of me.)

As a musician, Zach is without a doubt one of the most broad listening (genre) and knowledgeable participants we’ve had so far, so I can’t wait for you to dig into the interview… enjoy!

To start out, can you tell us a little about yourself and where people can follow your work?
I’m Zach Barocas. I grew up (mostly) in Rochester, NY. I’m a musician and composer. You can give much of my work a listen at zachbarocas.com.

I’ve been in New York City since 1997, with the exceptions of a very brief sojourn in Phoenix and a few years in the Twin Cities. My wife, Kimberley, and I have been together since 2000 mostly, and married since 2003. As far as we can tell, New York is our place. We have a stationery and gift shop here in Brooklyn called Measure Twice. We don’t do much online but you can find our instagram feed at measuretwiceshop.com.

How do you listen to music? (albums, playlists, radio?)
I’m format-agnostic and go where I can best hear what I’m after. My preference is for whole albums whenever possible.

Digital or physical releases? What service or media (vinyl, CD, tapes, etc)?
I listen to digital and physical releases, mostly streaming and vinyl. Some of the stuff I like is only available on CD, some of it, especially older records or less popular music or farther out music, is only available on vinyl. As for streaming, I listen on Apple Music and Bandcamp. I nose around on other platforms but usually end up cancelling my subscriptions.

In terms of picking music, do you stick to your favorites or search for new music or is it a mix?
I’m a seeker by nature and believe that the music we draw into our lives (and draw from our lives if we make music, although I suppose making music is as much a drawing into as it is a drawing out) is at the core of our spirit. So I maintain my favorites, of course, but I try to listen to something new or different every day. It might be something I stream in the morning while I write (this morning I listened to Clary Levy’s Outre-Nuit for the first time), or it might be something while I walk to or from work, or spin a record or CD when I have time.

In terms of genres, I probably spend most of my time listening to improvised music and new classical (that’s one word, like ice cream) music. I’m increasingly disinterested in formulaic or predictable rock music, or music that unwittingly plays someone else’s hand too enthusiatically. I’m not one for the poppier side of things in my own musical researches but I’m no less susceptible to “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter than anyone else. I tend to hang onto roughly one pop hit per year. “Espresso” last year, before that I found “Falling” by Harry Styles great to sing along with in the car, as was “Photograph” by Ed Sheeran But of course what I mean by “in the car” is “alone” and what I mean by “great” is “for a little while.” Which is what songs like that are supposed to do.

If you try to find new music, how do you go about finding new artists or albums?
I find new music and artists anyway I can. I subscribe to several music blogs and newsletters, I read the bandcamp best of pages. I read music columns in newspapers and magazines, I read liner notes, I read books about music, I talk to friends. I listen to music podcasts. I buy or stream records because I like the cover. I’m pretty flexible. As long as it strikes me as sort of spiritually expansive in intent, I’ll give it a shot. Sometimes this means religious or sacred music, but most of the time it might be “Passage Through The Spheres” by Kali Malone or “Forgiveness” by Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few or “Dança Dos Martelos” by Amaro Freitas.
Apple Music has been a great resource (especially the Classical app), in no small part because I understand the limitations and behaviors of its search, and further because it’s a platform that likes music. Qobuz is good for some kinds of out music but always seems just on the brink of total stability. Their editorial staff, though, is terrific and clearly music fans. I dumped Spotify during the Neil Young dust up and never went back. I’ve never for a single moment missed it. What a greedy drag of a platform. If I’m at a site with a Spotify embed I might listen but just as likely not.

I guess a simpler way to answer this question is search. I might hear of a composer, Olly Wilson for example, on a podcast, and from there I’ll search Bandcamp for him, and then Apple Music. From there it’s usually to Wikipedia and from there I’ll nose around YouTube, maybe (although I never enjoy YouTube, for music or anything else), or just keep an eye out when I next visit a record store. In the case of Mr. Wilson, there seem to be precious few recordings of his work, but I’ll try to hear whatever I can. This method is more or less consistent throughout all of my listening, and is, for all practical purposes, an ongoing course of study.

Zach’s Crucial Tracks

What’s your earliest song/music memory?

My earliest song memory is John Denver’s “The Box”,” which is not a song but closes a record that was in heavy rotation in my house when I was very young. I was frightened by it, as I recall, no doubt for how it sounded after all of the music that preceded it, a kind of evacuation of music on the one hand and a concentration of meaning on the other. Strange stuff. I’m not sure if that’s my earliest music memory but it’s close. “Lay Down” by Melanie was on my mother’s mind back then, too. The other end of the spectrum. This song starts hot. You’ve been warned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

What is an important song from your childhood?

Everything changed for me with Kiss. They were the first music I had that didn’t come from my parents’ collection. I have no idea how I found out about them. It was probably a television commercial. It was 1977, in any case, and I was 7 or 8 years old. “Detroit Rock City” was the focal point, although like most of the stuff I was into as a boy, I had no idea what it was about or why, in this case, one would would be compelled to lose one’s mind in Detroit, but there it was. My friend Josh and I painted our faces and listened to Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, Double Platinum, Alive I and Alive II with devoted repitition and no clear sense of what it all meant except that it turned us on. I suspect this is true of any Kiss fans of any age from any era. I still own my copy of Destroyer from back then.

The following year I saw Hair. From there I abandoned Kiss in favor of the 1960s broadly, which meant the Beatles specifically. Josh and I made the leap together and for roughly two years (ages 9-11) I think all we listened to was the Beatles. I began my drumming life during this period, and until Keith Moon entered the picture near the end of this stretch, all I wanted was to sound like Ringo. Once Keith Moon entered the picture, though, I broke my first bass drum pedal playing along with “Baba O’Reily.”

None of which is a song, of course, but like I said, I mostly listen to albums. And in some ways, boiling it down to these two artists at all does a disservice to how much music there was in my house prior to my parents’ divorce. There was always music, popular stuff from my mother, including “Midnight Train to Georgia”, “Ain’t No Sunshine”, James Taylor, Carole King. And from my father there was weekend morning classical on public radio and jazz records, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins. After the divorce, though, everything got quieter, and I withdrew as kids do and began an earnest search for new music that continues, as I’ve said, right up to the present. Music is my community and my extended family. I owe everything to it.

What’s one song that’s important to your teenage years?

This one is easier: “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel. It has impacted every area of my musical life, which is to say my life, from 1986 to the present. I’m reluctant to say much about it because I’ve said so much elsewhere, so if you want to have a look, you can find it here.

What’s one song that stands out from your college years (or early adulthood)?

“Waiting Room” by Fugazi Changed the course of my life. My wife and I live according to The Fugazi Principle which states: given that only one million people in the world have ever heard of Fugazi at all, everyone we know is drawn from that group. The principle applies in all groups at all times with greater than 99% accuracy.

I’d be remiss, however to not give credit to Los Lobos “Kiko and the Lavender Moon,” Emmylou Harris’ “Where Will I Be,” The Neville Brothers’ “Yellow Moon,” Charles Tolliver’s “Earl’s World” (the version on his Compassion LP), Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man,” Talk Talk’s “Ascension Day,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime,” The Roots’ “I Remain Calm,” Willie Nelson’s “The Maker,” the Temptations’s “I Can’t Get Next to You,” and countless others that bore the rhythmic variations and inspirations I needed most at that time. So I should mention those, too.

What’s a song that stands out from your current/most recent relationship?

“Into My Arms” by Nick Cave. This song was performed at our wedding ceremony by our dear friend Drew O’Doherty. An utterly captivating song. I can only listen when this one is on. No talking, no cleaning, no reading, no scrolling, nothing.

What’s your favorite song from the last year?**

Not sure. Could be “POP POP POP” by Idles. I can listen to this one like 5 times in a row. For a song whose instrumentation and mix are so tight, it manages to remain loose somehow, sort of a calculated shamble. I fear, however, that its fate for me is that of a pop song.

BONUS (optional): come up with your own question, if you’d like to feature a favorite artist or album that didn’t get covered in one of the other six questions. For example, we had an interviewee go with “What’s your most listened to artist of the last 20 years?” so they could talk about their favorite band and album.
Like I said, I’m not sure a survey of my listening in terms of songs adds much to the conversation. My listening is sort of fluid and constant. I don’t listen to many songs these days, opting instead for different forms and instrumentation than pop or song structures offer. I’m not averse to them, but they’re not much on my current path. All other things being equal, I recently came across this bit from E.L. Doctorow which seems to serve our purpose well:

The more I think about songs, the more mysterious they become. They stand in our minds as spiritual histories of certain times; they represent in their lyrics and lines of melody wars and other disasters, moral process, the fruits of experience, and, like prayers, the consolations beyond loss. Peoples are brought into being by them. They are a resource both for the loyalists defending their country and the revolutionists overthrowing it. Yet they are such short and linear things. Little sale tags on life. It is essential for their effect that they not go on and on. Not only their single-mindedness but their brevity makes them instantly accessible as no other form is.

[What a perfect way to end this interview! - Ed.]

Listen to this issue of Crucial Tracks

Find this issue’s playlist on Apple Music.

Thanks

Thanks to Zach for sharing his Crucial Tracks! As mentioned above, you can find more at zachbarocas.com. And if you are ever in Brooklyn, be sure to stop by his shop! (measuretwiceshop.com)