Joan of Arc bassist Bobby Burg is a busy guy. In the last five years he’s been apart of at least ten albums, a slew of 7”s, four or five bands, and even records as a solo project called Love of Everything. Now that Make Believe is (hopefully only hibernating) on hiatus, he also focuses on Vacations, which features former members of Chin Up Chin Up, crafting a sound that captures the rhythmic rise and fall of calypso caterwaul.
Creative Loafing: Where are you right now?
Bobby Burg: I’m sitting at my house. The tour starts the 19th.
For the last couple days have you been getting ready for the tour?
We basically just got off. In December ended five weeks of touring and then there was a week of recording. So we’re ready. We scheduled three practices before the tour. Three really long days of practice. We know which songs we’re going to play and we’re all working on them at home ourselves. Then we’ll go to practice all together when we’re prepared.
Will you only be playing bass?
Yeah, I’ll be playing bass.
There are no keyboards this time around?
Not on this tour no. Two guitarist, bass, and drums.
The last time I saw Joan of Arc it was around the Dick Cheney, Mark Twain LP and there were six or seven people on stage. And for this tour there are only four players.
I can’t say this for sure. Because we haven’t actually all played the songs together yet, but our plan is we’re going to be covering these old songs. Tim [Kinsella] and Victor [Villareal] had another band called Owls and we’re going to be playing four of the songs. That’s basically what I’m practicing, but yeah now that Victor is playing with us we can do that.
That’s really cool.
I’m really excited about that. I don’t know for sure if we’re going to be able to pull it off. But we’re going to try it. I can’t guarantee that it’ll actually happen. Hopefully it’ll work.
So there won’t be any extended krautrock style jamming going on?
There’s some jamming going on yeah. There’s always room for it. Victor’s approach to playing guitar in Joan of Arc right now, a lot of it is improvised each night. He has certain sections of each song composed, while written in between is some space for improvisation. There are long sections with a lot of exploration.
You’ve played in the larger versions of Joan of Arc and now this is with a smaller number of musicians. Are there some songs you can’t play now?
We sort of rearrange them. Tim, Theo [Katseounis], and I were the only three people from Joan of Arc that could go to last SXSW. We decided to try to do Joan of Arc as a power trio and we’re reworking old elaborate versions with lush instrumentation, oiling that down to just guitar/bass/drum format. It was really fun to try it out. So our idea was to write a whole set of new songs with that in mind and the way in which we boiled it down. ‘How can we make it sound most like the song? How can we make it sound the coolest using the least amount of resources?’
And that’s how you wrote the new album?
We wrote the new album with the three of us, and then towards the very end of the process Victor decided he wanted to join and we incorporated him. It’s also why a lot of his parts are looser because he didn’t have a lot of time. He was writing each night as we would play.
When you’re getting ready for this tour how do you choose what older songs to play?
We want to have a good variety. I don’t know. I guess sometimes we know that people always ask to hear certain songs. And if we’re going to be playing all these new songs, we really need to counterbalance with (pause, thinking) “Let’s Wrestle,” the song that the most amount of people ask to hear. So we learned that one for the last tour, that’s a song that people seem to really respond to.
What are other songs that people always request?
Well for a while everyone was asking about that song, the “fucking strangers” song ["Ne Mosquitos Pass"]. So we played that on one tour. That was really fun.
Even friends I have that don’t like Joan of Arc like that song.
I think a lot of people always ask about “White Out.”
Will there be more Vacations?
Yes. We recorded in the summer and we just need one more day of studio time and it’ll be done. But Jeremy [Bolen] has been at grad school and we haven’t been able to book it. The plan is get a date with the engineer to finish it up. Maybe fourteen songs and eight of them are already mixed and totally done. We just have to do the rest of them.
You think by the end of the year?
Yeah, I’m really excited about the new Vacations album. It’s pretty cool. The songs are really short.
Vacations is with the former members of Chin Up Chin Up and when I think of them I think of the really strange lyrics they had. Was writing lyrics for Vacations a collaborative process?
In Vacations, yes, 100%. Jeremy and I would send stuff back and forth to each other and help each other and we’d work on the lyrics and melodies. I haven’t really worked that collaboratively on someone with lyrics before but that was really fun. Sometimes we would take turns, thinking about what we wanted to say and then kind of mumbling over a song and then send it to each other and say ‘What did it sound like I said?’ And the lyrics were based more on the sound than actual subject matter of what we’re saying.
You did a song on the Don’t Mind Control comp called “Friday the 13 Part 2.” I was wondering if there was a previous version or if it’s just named after the movie.
It’s named after the movie. But I think Jeremy wrote it while he was watching it.
How do you describe Vacations to people? Or do you really have to?
It’s my ukulele rock band.
When’s the next Love Of Everything album coming out? Is that something you’ve been working on in the mean time?
I’m doing a CDR release on Friday. And I think I’m just going to have it for free. It’s an EP. I think I’m going to do some EPs.
Is it going to be available on the Joan of Arc tour?
I’ll just have it as a free download thing.
Are they all new songs?
Four new songs.
On some Love of Everything albums you have the same song but in a different style. How do you decide which songs to rerecord?
The Best In Tensions album was made with the idea to make an album of how we sound live. Because there’s such a variety that Love of Everything songs sound, I wanted to have one record at the merch table to tell people this is the one you heard. Playing for new people I was growing really frustrated when people would say ‘Which is the album you played tonight.’ And I’d have to point around, ‘One is on this one, one is on this one. But none of them are like what you heard tonight.’ The idea was basically to record the live set.
Download the new Love of Everything Kangaroo Trick EP here.
Go see Joan of Arc with Soft Circle, Zillionaire, and Pillars & Tongues at 9pm at New World Brewery Jan 27 and if you’re feeling extra sexy check out a Tim Kinsella solo set at Mojo Books & Music on the same day around 5pm.
Joyful Noise Recordings will release Joan of Arc presents Oh Brother on February 8th.
Polyvinyl Records will release the new Joan of Arc LP Life Like in May.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2011.