INTERVIEWS/Articles(37) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2010

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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Hermesacat » Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:05 am

Drugstore: A "new" old Hope interview! Nice, they don't seem to turn up very often anymore. Thank you.
I didn't know she's been a Beach House fan since as far back as 2009 as she mentions them in this Luna interview.
In 2016 interviews she said Beach House got played a lot at her house. I can thank Hope for turning me on to that band 'cause it was her mentions of them that got to check them out, & i like them a lot. Never heard her compare them to Opal before though.

She mentions here Fred Neil's "The Dolphins," which reminds me of this bit of 2017 tour trivia: the music HS&TWI have had played in venues before they go on stage for gigs for the Oct. 2017 tour include: Fred Neil's great song "The Dolphins," Neil Young's "On The Beach," The Rolling Stones' "Heaven," and Bill Fay's "Dust Filled Room." And the instrumental music they play at every gig as they take the stage and for a few minutes before is The Caretaker's "All You Are Going To Want To Do Is Get Back There."

And since I'm a cat person like Hope, I want to know who her "hero" "Lady the cat" is? Could it be her own cat she had in 2009? According to a 2017 interview, she allows herself just one cat (although she fantasizes about owning LOADS of cats, she says), and it's currently a male cat she owns. He's the neighborhood bully that picks cat fights. Maybe Lady the cat's deceased.
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby drugstore » Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:33 am

I remember Hope cited Beach House as one of her favorite artist many years (more than 10 years) ago. That is how I checked them out and I really love their music.
Last edited by drugstore on Fri Nov 09, 2018 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Emma » Mon Oct 30, 2017 12:50 pm

drugstore,
Thanks for the "new" old interview. I like how Hope imitated the owl's hoot when she mentioned The Hedgehog in the Fog movie. Hoohoo! :D

Image


I found the source of the "Melting into the Music" interview you posted to this thread last August. It comes from the Montreal Gazette. You can view it on the PressReader platform with its accompanying pictures:
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/mont ... 9157825990


I also found another "new" interview that is even older (2001).
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/ ... id=1066411
Among other things, Hope talks about Acetone and how she started working with Colm and the Warm Inventions.
I didn't know that "The Warm Inventions" were originally Colm's band...

Magick Power
Introducing Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions
By Eric Shea

On the way to a San Francisco cafe in the Duboce Triangle, Hope Sandoval laughs out loud. "The journalist I talked to before you was really nice, but he called me the 'goth-rock poster girl.' Can you believe that?!"

Of course you can't -- Sandoval's style and smile do not carry one hint of gothic melodrama. She's elegant and engaging with a sweet-tempered laugh; she obviously doesn't take herself as seriously as some of her more excitable fans do. But, as anyone with a Mazzy Star CD in his or her collection knows, behind Sandoval's dainty speaking voice is one of the last in a handful of artists who take music quite seriously.

Those who have all three Mazzy Star CDs might also know that Sandoval's bewitchingly breathy singing first accompanied David Roback's velvet-reverb guitar tones in the band Opal during the late '80s (following Kendra Smith's sudden departure from the band). Sandoval and Roback played some live shows as Opal before putting the band to rest and starting anew with Mazzy Star. They then released the ashen She Hangs Brightly, and the romantic So Tonight That I Might See, building a strong cult following until "Fade into You" got more spins than a drunk punk on payday. By the time that song climbed the alternative and college charts, Mazzy Star was almost a common household (and dorm-room) name. Then the wintry Among My Swan was released in 1996. The band became a sect phenomenon and then just seemed to disappear, dropping out of the public eye's peripheral vision like a vanishing ghost.

During her long absence from the pages of music magazines, Internet rumors about Sandoval began circulating. One was that she was recording with Jason Pierce and Spiritualized (actually, she recorded a song on the Chemical Brothers' album Together, which sounds a lot like a Spiritualized song). Another rumor stated that she was recording with the LA trio Acetone (this actually almost happened). And then there was the story that she and My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm O'Ciosoig were living in the Berkeley hills, putting together and recording a new project under the name Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions (this happens to be true).

O'Ciosoig, the drummer who is partially responsible for making teenagers and twentysomethings deaf in the late '80s and early '90s, is indeed Sandoval's musical companion and housemate. Sandoval pursued him at a Snowpony show in London and soon the both of them began plotting a project that has been in the works for the past two years. Sandoval brings voice and songs to O'Ciosoig's band, and in turn he will be providing rhythm for future Mazzy Star endeavors. But Mazzy Star's ongoing musical legacy isn't of immediate importance to either of them; this is the time for new ideas, grand collaborations, and warm inventions.

"When I met Colm he was just getting into working with his band, the Warm Inventions," says Sandoval. "I was about to work with Acetone, but it just didn't happen. So Colm and his friends and I recorded a few songs together and it really just worked out well." Sandoval had come close to rolling tape with the slow-burning tones of the underrated Acetone, whose gifted lead singer Richie Lee committed suicide on July 23rd of this year.

"It's a real tragedy. I think they were one of the best bands. I was so excited about working with [them]," she says. "[Mazzy Star] did two tours with them and it was unbelievable. They mesmerized everyone; they're just amazing and beautiful people -- especially Richie. He was so talented."

Sandoval realized, however, that she wanted to make not just three or four songs but what she calls a "whole-sounding record."

Indeed, from the opening acoustic-strummed chimes of "Drop" (the best Jesus and Mary Chain cover since Primal Scream's hypnotic rendition of "Darklands"), Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions have rendered an aurally indulgent album of timeless tastes and gorgeous songs. Their rich chemistry plays on the inspiration of something new, and produces a unified sound of seasoned tunesmiths. Bavarian Fruit Bread is garnished with floating strings, warm keys, harmonica drones, and subtly intricate rhythms and tranquilizing vocals; there is not a grain of musical filler, not a moment wasted. As well, they got British folk god Bert Jansch to record with them.

"He's a genius and a pioneer," says Sandoval. "He just made up all those parts for 'Butterfly Mornings,' and it's so amazing because I think that his playing is his own interpretation of a floating butterfly.... I was in tears after every session with him. I was crying to Colm and saying, 'This is totally unbelievable.'"

"[Jansch] would just begin picking something on his acoustic guitar," says O'Ciosoig, "and suddenly all this sound would open up around him. He can make one guitar sound like an entire symphony."

Sandoval recalls a mid-'90s London show that Mazzy Star played with Jansch, a Pentangle cofounder. She gave him a demo tape of some of her songs. They got in touch when the recordings for Bavarian Fruit Bread first began to materialize. Needless to say, Sandoval was a bit starstruck.

"I've been into his music for so many years," she says, "and all of a sudden he was there and we were having dinner. It's like if you're a fan of Jimi Hendrix or Keith Richards or Brian Jones, and then you're sitting at a table with them."

She recalls their first private meeting with clarity: "Within the first fifteen minutes that Bert came over, we all sat down on the sofa. Everybody was so nervous. And he pulls out the guitar to tune it and everybody's just sort of quiet and sitting there on the sofa. David [Roback] is a huge fan as well. He has this flat in Oslo, Norway that overlooks a beautiful park across the street. And we were just sort of facing the window and Bert starts to play. David and I just looked at each other. It was so amazing. And later David asked him, 'When was the first time you ever picked up a guitar?' When David asked him that I just got so emotional -- here we were sitting at the dinner table with Bert Jansch and he started to talk about the first time he ever played the guitar. He told us that his mother bought him a kit. It was a 'Make Your Own Spanish Guitar' kit."

Although a few tracks for Bavarian Fruit Bread were recorded at Roback's Oslo studio, this was definitely not a Mazzy Star effort. "Mazzy Star is a much more tight and very small circle of people," says Sandoval. "A lot of them are people that David had been working with even before he and I worked together. I love all those people. But I come from a different kind of music. David comes from the Rain Parade and Opal. I came from Going Home, a much mellower and more acoustic kind of project that I had with my best friend Sylvia."

On her most recent and ethereal endeavor, Sandoval hoped to traverse the regions of her own music, curious to see how it fared in the hands of other musicians. "It's been nice to sort of go back to that in a way -- to play my little songs," she says. "I wanted to play my music and explore it with other musicians, because I've only played with the musicians in Mazzy Star and, of course, Sylvia. I really wanted to experiment and see what would happen. Plus Mazzy Star became this big deal and things got a bit strange."

The sudden rise in Mazzy Star's popularity made it more difficult for Sandoval to work with some people in the music industry. "It's an awkward place to be. Suddenly there are so many eyes on you. You have this sense that there are certain people paying attention all of the sudden. And then people at Capitol Records would buy our shows out."

When a major-label band lands a radio hit, Hollywood industry heads are notorious for sometimes buying out the majority of tickets to a show. These tickets are then usually dispersed among other industry folks, turning what should be a normal gig into a schmoozy showcase with the band thrown into a compromising position as hired background noise. O'Ciosoig faced similar problems once My Bloody Valentine began to sell out American venues.

"It's like the first few rows of the audience would be made up of industry people, because they would buy those entire rows out," says O'Ciosoig. "It's like you're becoming a court musician rather than a club musician -- as if you're playing in courts for kings and queens like a minstrel or a bard. It becomes less personal and less about the music."

"We would fight this all the time," says Sandoval, "because Capitol would buy out a small club and start giving tickets away. Our manager would be on the phone with them nonstop, saying, 'No, you can't do that. We can't allow you to do this.' And it became awkward telling the record company, 'No, we don't want you to buy our show out.' We would play a 300-capacity club, which was totally easy for the label to fill up. It became a constant battle for us, and [the label] would say, 'Oh, they're being really difficult again.' When you won't budge from your original ideas, you often become perceived as 'difficult' to some in the music industry. Other than that, Capitol was really a nice label, but it just turned into something else. Different people got involved -- a whole set of different people that we didn't know, and I don't think they really had the kind of respect that the first people showed."

But those days of disrespect and difficulty are behind them. Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions are now signed to Rough Trade. And in today's climate of major-label money hoarding, Sandoval seems satisfied to be back on the indie circuit where she and O'Ciosoig have the freedom to let new ideas materialize in the form of a new band.

"It was really nice to do something with people I don't think I would have worked with if it was a Mazzy Star project," she says. "It's a team, you know? You have to agree on things, and sometimes people don't agree on everything. I think Colm and I had the same attitude on this record about working with different people. And if you truly enjoy playing music, it just makes sense to play with more than one group of people."
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Hermesacat » Tue Oct 31, 2017 2:49 am

Thanks Emma & drugstore or two excellent "new" old Hope (& Colm) interviews.

Drugstore: I'm extremely curious to know where & when you read or heard of Hope saying her cat was named Herman and he's 10 years old, a quote I'm sure I never encountered 'cause if I had it would have stayed prominent in my Hope-&-cat-factoids memory!

I do recall a 2013 SPIN mag interview with Hope & Colm
https://www.spin.com/2013/09/mazzy-star ... interview/
where they pull the interviewer's leg about someone named "Herman"
supposedly having contributed to the making of the "Seasons" album, except their description of
the mysterious Herman sounds more like a description of a cat than a human
(as someone in comments pointed out)! But I never read Hope mention specifically Herman was her cat or how
old he was. So where did you find that info?

There's lots of interesting band history info in that interview Emma posted. I too didn't know the
original Warm inventions were a band of Colm's first, & didn't know Hope planned to collaborate with
Acetone before Richie Lee committed suicide.

So much info on Bert Jansch too. That reminds me, there's a guy I
I know a bit from dimeadozen.org popular live show torrent sharing site, "Kneesfudd." He's the one who shared via Dime a rare 1987 North American Opal gig with Hope (the only one I've heard) just weeks after she'd joined the band, a gig at Victoria, BC, Dec., 1987. Anyway, he's been in the music business (I don't know in what all capacities) knew Bert Jansch some, and has been a big Mazzy Star fan. He messaged me with some fascinating first hand anecdotes about Bert and also Mazzy Star shows.

I've never read Hope say Bert was already a huge Mazzy Star fan years before he & Hope ever collaborated, but according to Kneesfudd he was. He says Bert played Mazzy Star over and over on his walkman he listened to in the car as Kneesfudd drove Bert and other members of Bert's band Pentangle around during a Pentangle tour of the north-east U.S. in 1993. Bert also attended Mazzy Star shows. Keesfudd recounted running into Bert at a Mazzy gig in London in 1996 and that Bert "was psyched (in his very low-key way) because (if i remember rightly) he'd just gotten to meet Hope."

-I suggested to Kneesfudd that maybe Hope was being self-effacing in interviews by not mentioning Bert had been a big Mazzy Star fan in the 1990s when she did talk about him. Kneesfudd said that could be the case, but that I should also consider "Bert was not one to wax eloquently...one on one he was pretty cool, but he tended towards the quiet side." So, maybe Bert never fully communicated to Hope how much he loved Mazzy Star!

-Once I gather together all Kneesfudd's bits of anecdote he messaged me with re. Bert, and re. Mazzy Star shows, I'll post them all in a post in the "Band(s) History, Anecdotes, Trivia" thread.
Last edited by Hermesacat on Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Hermesacat » Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:05 am

To the main list organized by date, I added the three articles Emma and Drugstore recently posted.
The first time around I must have missed the Montreal Gazette one Emma found a link for and drugstore posted text from in August as that time of year I was barely on the net at all.

Great to get to read three vintage interviews in a row, all ones I'd not encountered before! Old recordings, old interviews, they keep coming! Btw, someone from the FB Group found two old cassettes he recorded of Mazzy Star live in Cleveland in 1990 and 1993, ones that have never circulated as bootlegs before. He's mailing CD copies he made from them to me this week so I can prepare & share them on his behalf. The 1990 one is the one I'm most curious about as 1990 Mazzy shows are (unlike 1993-4 ones) so rare I only know of 3 circulating. My biggest fantasy/ hope re. old recordings now is the prospect of stumbling upon an unreleased original song or cover I've never heard the band perform before! Hey, it's possible.
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby drugstore » Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:55 pm

Hermesacat: Cannot wait to read the anecdote re. Bert and Mazzy star. I like all the songs they collaborated. As to the info about Hope's cat, I was soooooo lucky to go backstage after one show this tour and Hope told me about that. :)
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Hermesacat » Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:55 pm

Drugstore: Re. your meeting Hope, Do tell. That was DC? How did it come about? And how did the subject of cats come up (a topic I'd try to bring up if I ever met her & had time to ask). Meowza. What else you you talk about with her? I'm very happy to learn this new Hope-&-cat-factoid from you!

I'm thinking even though Herman the cat is 10 years old in 2017 and that Hope says she only allows herself one cat a time, "Lady the cat" she mentions in that 2009 interview could (possibly) still have been her only cat at that time since people do adopt cats already years old. I adopted a 5 year old, and a 3 year old cat before. Come to think of it, Hope has a friend in San Francisco , Lori Reyes - (who acted as one of Mazzy Star's official photographers for the 2013 tour, along with Luz Gallardo. Lori created that striking purple coloured official poster for the tour) - works at an animal rescue shelter in SF. Maybe Herman came from there, who knows?

I'll do that Kneesudd anecdotes post soon. Today I'm preparing the Oct. 13 Berkeley show I received. Should have it up soon too.
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby drugstore » Wed Nov 01, 2017 2:04 am

Hermesacat: Yeah, it was in DC. After the concert, I was waiting at the sidedoor chatting with some other fans ,then their bassist, AL, invited me to backstage. I think I was invited because I also attended the Philly show the night before and got to meet the other band members and they knew I flew from midwestern to attend the shows. Actually I didn't dare to expect to "meet" Hope, I waited outside just expecting to have a chance to say "Hi" or something like that (silly fan girl :|). So when I went to backstage and found that actually I was the only fan who were invited that night I got a little too nervous ,afraid of asking anything or saying anything :| . But I need to say that Hope is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo kind, she tried to find things to talk about. One of the staff kindly showed me a pic of her cat, that is how the topic of cats came up. She also talked about how good the Bay area is and suggested I need to get a chance to visit. Also, I told her I skipped two days class for the shows and she said she used to do the same things when she was at school, haha. The most impressive part to me is that when a staff of the venue suggested to take a picture of me and Hope, one of their own crew said that their rule is "no pictures". I was supposed to say something like "That's fine" but I delayed two seconds since I'm not a native English speaker and I was searching the most appropriate expressions in my head :oops: . Due to my silence, Hope kindly said that "But we can take a picture today." Which makes me feel that she is soooooooooo nice since I could feel that she is not willing to take pics but she agreed because she didn't want to hurt my feelings.
When I recall the experience I think I definitely need to open more to talk to her instead of stood nervously and letting her trying to find topics to talk to me. I feel like I may be the stupidest fan ever due to my nervousness and bad English, and she is the sweetest and kindest artist when meeting fans. I know there were several comments on internet which are not that positive about her attitude towards fans, but this is totally incongruent with my experience (and some other fans' experience who got to met her I have chatted with) . So I'm a little verbose on this post, just want to share my experience with you and other fans. :)
By the way, all the band members and staffs are so kind. When I waited after the Philly show one staff (or maybe band member) offered that if I haven't got a ticket for the DC show, he can gave me one. And after the DC show one staff specially find me to gave the setlist to me. And at backstage one staff gave me his No.2 backstage pass. Such a totally warm and beautiful experience!
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Hermesacat » Wed Nov 01, 2017 3:09 am

Thank you so much Drugstore for describing your meeting Hope. I love hearing details of such stories, including yours! I'm glad she and the band and others were all such pleasant people.
If she wanted to make an exception re. the "no photos" rule for you, she must have thought you're a fine and deserving fan, and didn't mind that you were a little quiet!

I have one more Herman question. Does the picture you were shown resemble this picture of a cat from the Tendril Tales video found at Hope's mysterious official site tendriltales.com back in 2016? It's not the clearest pic, as it's a negative version of a photo, & doesn't show much of the cat's body. But I can see what look like tabby stripes on its head and a stripe on his shoulder, so it looks like a tabby or part tabby striped cat. Could it be Herman in both photos, do you think?
Image

I've read or been told accounts of meeting Hope by four or more other fans, and they all found Hope a pleasant person. In the "Band(s) History" thread I include some stories of Hope in the 1990s being "difficult" with a radio host/interviewer, and with a record store employee, but I don't know of stories of fans finding her to be difficult.

She may have been more shy in the 1990s. Recently, in the FB fan group someone recounted meeting Hope before a Cleveland show in 1990. He said she was shy but pleasant, and he spoke with her for a couple of minutes.

Another FB Group member who attended the Oct. 13, 2017 Berkeley show messaged me that he'd gotten invited by Hope's brother (who he by chance had been sitting near and started chatting with after the show) to the back stage party. He got to chat with Hope for 15 minutes. He recalled they talked about Cocteau Twins who Hope likes and how she didn't want Mazzy Star to open for that band when asked to because their singer Liz Fraser was "a god" to her and I guess Hope didn't feel "worthy"! But Mazzy Star did tour with Cocteau Twins in 1990. Also, she talked about how she learned harmonica: by "making it up", and how she doesn't really keep up with current bands and music. The fan said she wasn't shy at all, but was outgoing, engaging, & talkative, as you found too.
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Re: INTERVIEWS/Articles(32) Hope Sandoval & T.W.I.,2001 to 2

Postby Hermesacat » Thu Nov 02, 2017 1:14 am

Just in case anyone else may be interested in Hope cat-trivia...Drugstore contacted me via FB message and to answer my Herman question to her, supplying convincing evidence suggesting the cat in the screen shot from the Tendril Tales video, and one of the two cats in the "I'm Less Here" video (the tabby-like one walking around) are Hope's cat Herman, in both cases. Thank you Drugstore for sharing your knowledge about Herman the cat!
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