HIP THERAPY MUSIC

In the first part of my three-part interview, multi-instrumentalist Victor Krummenacher talked about the diversity of his current projects. Now, our conversation takes on the issue of HOW he listens and how best to support working musicians.

With so many music platforms across the internet – some favorable to musicians and some decidedly not – Victor discusses his listening habits, the positives and negatives of volume, music’s place in the battle for your attention, and what to him constitutes “healthy” listening.

Victor Krummenacher is currently a member of the Portland-based band Eyelids, DJ Bonebrake’s Two Heads, Dave Alvin’s The Third Mind, Camper Van Beethoven (yes, they still have plans) as well as Camper’s offshoot Monks of Doom, all while creating a substantial catalog of solo work. He also directed the recent video for the John Doe Trio’s song, Destroying Angels. Busy guy!

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WH: This is probably the broadest question I’ll ask: when you listen to music, how do you do it? Streaming services? CD’s? Your own personal vinyl collection?

VK: My preferred way of listening to music is actually on vinyl. I have a pretty nice turntable that a fan gave me. And I have a decent but not super-expansive collection. I have many good records, I just don’t have a lot of them… some Alice Coltrane vinyl; I like to listen to Arvo Part, the Estonian composer; Mingus; old rock and roll records… LOUD. There’s something really pleasurable about sitting and listening. I rediscovered it during the pandemic but it never really went away. Sitting with a good-sounding format turned up, the dynamics of the music come out.

WH: You hear the nuances.

VK: Yeah. In my house, the basement is both a design and audio studio, which is where I am right now. In front of me I have studio grade monitors for when I edit, so when I’m working, I’m streaming, usually off Apple Music. For personal reasons I try to avoid Spotify. Occasionally I can’t find what I’m looking for, so (I visit) YouTube, which is a weird compendium of old records and stuff. If there’s something obscure and I can’t find it in a streaming format I can often find it on YouTube. And I just play things at a pretty reasonable volume in the studio. Part of it is probably that I’m deaf at this point (laughs). 

WH: I was debating whether I should ask or not, because hearing, for guys like us…

VK: Yeah, I’ve been in some pretty loud bands. Eyelids are one of the louder bands I’ve been in so I’m getting new earplugs. Camper got quieter and quieter over the years, I think because the sheer volume and the experience of it just burned us out. But yeah, if it’s well recorded, there’s a certain volume where I can hear the dynamics of the playing.

“If you can just turn off everything and actually listen to music, it’s helpful for your headspace.”

— VICTOR KRUMMENACHER

We have enough bandwidth available now that we can deliver streaming services at a higher bitrate, so let’s just do that, but for Christ’s sake, sit still and actually listen! We’re so bombarded. If you can just turn off everything and actually listen to music, it’s helpful for your headspace. A big part of my deal with people is just… turn off. TURN OFF. And it’s very difficult. It’s easier said than done.

WH: I recently saw a documentary that described phone apps as having you on one side of the screen and 500 to 1000 design engineers on the other side and their goal was to keep you engrossed so you’d spend more and more time on the app. Kind of an unfair fight. Their currency is your attention span and I don’t think we realize how dangerous that is. 

VK: Yeah, the masters of UX/UI (user experience/user interface), people who are really, really highly paid on the design side of it, are people who specialize in gambling. That is for-sure true. The engagement experiences are designed to hit your dopamine reflex, that’s what they’re designed to do. So we’re in a massively weird phase of human engineering. Which is why I have a penchant for the Criterion Channel, old movies, reading… God forbid you actually sit and read a book! I know a lot of avid readers who have remarked that their attention spans are reduced.

“…trying to work at a high level is trying to distract people and give them something immersive. ‘Here’s an opportunity to just lose yourself.'”

— Victor Krummenacher

I think we’re in a weird social-engineering phase so I try to encourage people to turn it off and music’s a really good way to do that. It’s not that you’re completely turned off but music is more abstract, it’s a language unto itself and your brain goes places that you don’t necessarily anticipate and I think that’s really good. For me, that’s just the whole ethos. I strive for creative excellence in all the things that I do, but also, part of trying to work at a high level is trying to distract people and give them something immersive. “Here’s an opportunity to just lose yourself.” 

WH: Reward their attention span, not abuse it.

VK:  Yes. I’m certainly more prolific than some people but I’m not trying to inundate people, I just do it as it comes. I have some projects that I’m working on now, some of it retrospective, some is some older material that’s been sitting around that I just want to get out.

“…they asked us to perform Nebraska, Springsteen’s record, from top to bottom, and we recorded it… I’ve actually gotten clearance from Springsteen’s people to get that out.”

— Victor Krummenacher

There’s some solo recordings from the mid-90s, I hadn’t heard them in years and years and they sound fairly compelling and there’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, I had that for a little while, And we were curated for this Berkeley events series and they asked us to perform Nebraska, Springsteen’s record, from top to bottom, and we recorded it and it was pretty good. So I’ve actually gotten clearance from Springsteen’s people to get that out. If you’ve been doing it for a long time there’s always… stuff… that is available. There’s always a project going on. I just try to keep creatively alive. 

WH: To get back to what you were saying about streaming services, I’ve been following (Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven bandmate) David Lowery’s social posts for a number of years and it’s fascinating, as an outsider, to learn about the economics of being a musician and publishing and royalties and all the stuff that he gets into. How aligned are you and David on that thinking? I’m not trying to stir up trouble, I’m just trying to get a feel for your point of view. 

VK: I’m in agreement with David on most aspects of it. I think our differences are (minimal). I mean, it’s hard to defend something like Spotify. Then there’s just the reality that they are the deeper-pocketed means of distributing your material. Currently I’ve pulled everything from streaming other than Bandcamp but part of that is for me to take the time and go through and make sure (they’re organized and sound right). 

We’ve been in this weird technological state for a long time where a lot of our recordings are on formats that no longer exist, like ADAT. I mean, I’m not Neil Young, I don’t need all my multi-tracks available but I would like to be able to, for as long as it matters, likely my lifespan, to digitally preserve my master recordings in such a way that the material’s available. And so the controversy about streaming was, on some levels, that whole Neil Young-hates-Spotify-because-of-Joe-Rogan-thing, that’s a free-speech argument and I actually disagree… I have no love for Joe Rogan, but I have NO love for corporate censorship. I find that a very ugly precedent. But I’m also from an age where I was taught to hate the “security state,” even though, ironically, I sometimes work for the security state  because of who I work for.

“…what I did for a long time was balance the income from playing live with Camper and use that money to subsidize things that I did that weren’t going to make money… Streaming has made that much harder for us.”

— Victor Krummenacher

I’m distrustful of big tech and I think David is very much right. Everything I do is very DIY and he’s got a better understanding of it than I do. I’m “do the spreadsheet, figure it out, can I afford to lose money on this or can I not afford to lose money on this?” A lot of what I did for a long time was balance the income from playing live with Camper and use that money to subsidize things that I did that weren’t going to make money or were just going to break even. Streaming has made that much harder for us. Combine that with Covid-touring economics… 

WH: Yes, it’s my understanding that for musicians nowadays, the best way to generate an income is to just go out there and play… to tour. Covid blew that whole idea up. 

VK: Yeah, it’s not necessarily a liveable prospect. I’m fortunate that I’m able to associate with Camper or Eyelids. Eyelids operates in much the same way that Camper did, we do have a small record company that we work with. We work smart, we work fast. We keep things tight. And we do tour, we just try and choose the most effective way we can. We associate with people we know, appeal to our community and try to get people out.

So the problem with streaming is it’s not like a mom-and-pop record store. There’s no community in it. Streaming is not like radio, because radio has a community. There’s no community base (with streamers). They’re big, multi-national monoliths that you plug into in isolation. The curation processes are not intuitive for anybody who’s over the age of 30. I have a lot of friends in their 20s and 30s and their whole means of listening is very different from ours (over 50s) just because of how they were exposed to technology.

“…if you look at the burning tire fire that America is right now, a lot of it has to do with the fact that our community culture is so challenged…” 

— Victor Krummenacher

So we’re confronted with these radical shifts and my big problem with the shift towards streaming and the big labels’ relationships with streaming is that it’s essentially screwed the middle class, which is just the story in America right now. I’m not a fan of big corporations dominating culture. I don’t think it’s healthy. I think if you look at the burning tire fire that America is right now, a lot of it has to do with the fact that our community culture is so challenged right now. 

WH: With all the reporting about the streaming services, what would you suggest as the best way for people to simultaneously listen to their favorite music and support the musicians that made it? What’s the best option, or maybe the least- bad option? 

VK: Your best option, whenever possible, is to buy directly from the artists. Your best option for supporting them is to go see them or in a lot of cases, for people who are not comfortable going out, I know people who will just buy a ticket. Just buy the ticket. You don’t have to go. Every gesture that you make that goes directly into the artist’s pocket is by far the best thing to do. 

WH: Do you have merch on your website?

VK: I do. Go to the music page of VictorKrummenacher.com. I’ve got an online store. And also on Bandcamp. (That site’s) percentage is reasonable and I can control what I’ve got content-wise. If you’re buying it through Bandcamp it’s stuff that I’ve put up there myself. It’s the best possible quality that you can get. 

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Next: In part 3, Victor Krummenacher talks about more upcoming projects, including new music that truly lights him up. Hit him up at VictorKrummenacher.com.

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