Sometimes something beautiful can be created out of pain and sadness. That’s the case with Suzzallo, a new project for Rocky Votolato that’s almost a supergroup of sorts.
The band includes former Schoolyard Heroes member Steve Bonnell on bass, Waxwing’s Rudy Gajadhar on drums and Votolato. Adding to the band’s bona fides is Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard who lends vocals and guitars to two songs on “The Quiet Year.” Combine that pedigree with Votolato’s decision to stray from his softer solo material and make Suzzallo a plugged-in and cranked-up project, and it’s no surprise “The Quiet Year” is one of the best Pacific Northwest rock records of the year.
I caught up with Votolato and he shed light into the creation of the album and the importance of the band behind it.
What made you decide to make Suzzallo a band album instead of doing a solo project and just calling it Suzzallo?
I very much wanted to be in a room with other humans. That was kind of part of what I was looking for as an experience from this and I wanted to connect with Rudy (Gajadhar, Suzzallo’s drummer). I played with him in Waxwing back in the day and to be able to do something in person. So many people do things over the internet these days. I did not want to do that.
It was like a reaction against that kind of work and I just wanted to go back to the way I did it when I was young. And I think a lot of that too came out of you know this album being born out of tragedy and grief and just needing to have a safe space with the people near me. It’s kind of like when you go through something like this and major grief, you lose certain people and you gain certain people. It just depends on if they can be there with you in that grief and in what you’re going through.
I needed people near me that I really felt that connection with and Steve (Bonnell, Suzzallo’s bassist) and Rudy were both dear friends who kind of showed up and really made space for me and were there for me through that experience. I think in my case that was why I didn’t want to make this a solo thing, I wanted Suzzallo to be something so much bigger than me as a person.
So having those guys is very important to it and I just knew it was going to be a big, big sound. I wanted to be able to capture that and also have it be the way it was for me when I was working on Waxwing, which is like guys, just you know humans in a room and we’re coming up with creative ideas. I think there’s some magic to that.
In some ways I’m driving the ship of Suzzallo, but I love having these guys there as a part of it. It’s a special thing when people are in the room together and there’s a magic that happens when you’ve got three minds creating and focusing on something at once. I think when people see Suzzallo live, they’ll experience that as well.
You know Rudy from your previous band Waxwing. How did you get to know Steve?
So Steve and I played together back in the Waxwing days when he was in Schoolyard Heroes.
That band was great and they played with Waxwing I think at the Vera Project and you know a few other clubs around town. Probably like I don’t know early 2000sish and so we met then but then we kind of we just became friends just stayed in touch and just became good friends.
Steve was a guitar player in Schoolyard Heroes so I had to kind of talk him into playing bass. But he was around and helping me with kind of technical recording stuff when I was getting the demoing started for Suzzallo, and so we were at a studio in Tacoma called Alma and there was this little short scale Fender Mustang bass sitting there and I was like ‘Do you want to just pick up that bass and come play this song with us?’ And that was it, like once we played a song together, then we all felt it and we knew it was like, okay this is gonna be the band.
Tell me about working with John Goodmanson because he’s helped make some of my favorite records. What did he bring to the table as a producer?
Oh, man. It was such a joy to work with him. I met him at Robert Lang Studios when he was working on “Crimes” by the Blood Brothers, the band my little brother and Rudy’s little brother and are in. And Cody (Votolato’s little brother) actually recommended John when I was searching for a producer. He added so much to the record. I’m Very grateful that he was able to be a part of it.
I think the biggest thing was just you know, he made space for me in a way that a producer never has like he trusted my vision and he allowed me to explore things. I feel like it was just he was the right guy for the job. Because I trusted him and he’s one of my favorite producers too, and has made some of my very favorite albums ever, and I just knew and trusted his ability to get guitar sounds and drum sounds and handle the mixing. It was kind of a perfect fit.
I’m really glad it worked out so well. It was my best experience ever working with a producer. I just I never felt so cared for and so trusted as an artist to realize the vision I had for an album and I’ll forever be grateful for that because I love the record. It’s everything I wanted it to be and I can’t say that about most everything I’ve ever made as an artist, but this record I’m extremely happy with the way it was produced. I love the sound of it.
It’s a comfort to me now. You know, we took so much care with every aspect of the record. Spent more time energy, money, blood, sweat, tears, everything than I have on anything I’ve ever worked on and I just am so happy with it.
It shows that you put a lot of heart into the album and a lot of time and energy and effort. I wanted to ask also about the Kickstarter campaign and what led to deciding to launch this on Kickstarter.
I’ve done several Kickstarter. I think this is my third one, and I think it’s just a really great way to connect with a fanbase to build excitement around a project and also raise the money to pay for the recording. You know getting the funds, it’s much more expensive to do a record this way, the kind of the old-school way you know going into the studio. And we spent a lot of money at Robert Lang and having a producer.
I just wanted to do it right. I wanted to do it the way people made records in the 90s and that’s because I think those records sound amazing. I love how hi-fi all the records were that were coming out around that time, and so that was kind of what we were aiming for.
So yeah, this was a bigger budget to spend on the recording. But even with that we made really special packaging for all the vinyl. It’s beautiful … I never put so much love and attention and time into anything I’ve ever made.
Could you talk a little bit about your experience with the catharsis of music and letting out emotions and grief through music.
I feel like This has always been the case in my life and I wasn’t as aware of it when I was younger. You know what I was doing, you know Maybe even around
“Makers” and all the other solo albums I’ve done. I think it was less conscious then but I feel like music has been kind of a therapy for me or a way of figuring out life, but with this project, you know, it’s never been so immediate. I feel like I was making this music out of necessity to process all of this grief and the tragedy of losing our child in a really unexpected way in a car accident.
I’m so grateful that it was there for me, you know as a way to channel and process a lot of that grief. And I couldn’t really do it the way I did before. And I think this is back to the other question like why I wanted the band and why I needed like a louder sound. I needed something that was just like distorted guitars, you know, that’s what that’s what made sense to me.
I went on this search for around six months. I was looking for this sound. I had ‘78 SG and I was playing different amps and I remember the day when I played the Mesa Badlander and then also had a fuzz pedal, which is the Big Muff but with a triangle, you know. It’s the triangle Big Muff.
And so when I played that combination, I heard the sound, I was like, oh my god this is it. like I’ve been searching for this and just like a light went off and I felt so good because I finally felt like there was a sound that captured exactly how I felt. And then I took that to John and we experimented a lot in the studio. But he was so good at capturing that and translating it onto the album that I feel like we found the perfect sound for Suzzallo.
From a vocal perspective, I feel like a lot of it was tied in with the scream therapy I did and basically just like me needing to have that outlet. There were a lot of times I would just be screaming to process grief and anger, like it showed up as a lot of anger for me.
I felt such an injustice to the whole thing and was like ‘what the fuck?’ or ‘why?’ like asking why a lot at the universe. How can it be structured this way so that these things that make no sense happen, and you’re never going get an answer for those questions. Basically, I think in that moment you need art and music and community more than ever, and that’s what Suzzallo is.
It kind of helped me to have a way to process all this and build something around it. It just makes it so you can keep going forward and that’s one of the greatest things about it too, and just in music in general. Then, you get to share that with others and hopefully bring them into your experience and there’s a connection and a shared catharsis, which I’m feeling with people around Suzzallo.
I think all music does that to a certain degree. But this is just a particularly intense version. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful that I have the channel to be able to play a loud guitar and sing and write and get those things out.
One of the things that I get aside from the themes of grief when I listen to the record is, I hear a lot of hope. I hear optimism. I hear love. How important was it for you to acknowledge the grief in the moment while also knowing it will get better?
Totally, that was what I always wanted to work in. This big revelation for me after losing Kienan (Votolato’s child) was really that grief is just love with nowhere to go. That’s been a big kind of lifeline for me that I’ve held on to through the chaos of all of this loss and tragedy and just carnage of what your life becomes in this kind of situation.
I feel like I kind of knew that that that grief is love. It needed somewhere to go and the music and the art and that I was creating was giving it a place to go. And I knew that if I could capture that and create something that I would feel better. And I noticed as I was able to write stuff and get it out, it was helping me.
I think that music is absolutely a force for healing, in our world and in our community. It’s an act of joy and rebellion that I embrace, and I encourage in everyone. You know, our world is so fucked and so fucked up in so many ways for so many reasons, not just politically but environmentally and everything that’s going on in the world, and people need a way to express their anger, express their frustration and just be able to get that out.
I feel like a big part of Suzzallo is hopefully bringing a community together to be able to have that cathartic experience and also just have joy and fun. I feel it’s a weird thing because this record and this band were born out of such a tragedy and grief. But to me, I feel a lot of comfort around the fact that it exists, and it gives me a reason to keep going and keep showing up for the people in my life … If you recognize your connection to the others around you who need you and depend on you, of course you want to keep showing up. I feel bad that I couldn’t show up better than I did the last three years, you know, because your brain is not the same when you’re in that kind of grief.
I just wasn’t as capable of doing things, but the one thing that was there for me was art and music. And that’s a big part of why the Kickstarter was a thing. I couldn’t really work much, April (Votolato’s wife) couldn’t work much. Our life was kind of destroyed by the whole thing. We had to kind of rebuild things and I feel like the community really rallied around us and Suzzallo with the Kickstarter and now that the records out we’re kind of expanding from there.
Tell me about the dragon theme that’s across the record. That’s really interesting to me because the artwork is a dragon, there’s song about dragons. Also, I hear there’s a really great story behind “Star String Radio.”
Yeah, both of those things are connected to Kienan. You know the dragons happened super organically, but it was basically just that Kienan loved dragons so much. After Kienan passed when I would see dragons or April would or our family would, we would always see it kind of as a sign from the other side. It always kind of reminded us of Kienan and we’d feel connected.
I think there are these ways that the ones on the other side who go before us can communicate with us while we’re still here, and so we felt dragons very much were a part of that. We kept seeing things, you know, and it became something within our family where we would give each other pictures of dragons that we saw or whatever and from there it became kind of a mascot for Suzzallo.
I found the name for the band At the University of Washington Suzzallo Library. I went to school there and I got my degree in English literature and I was in that library all the time. And I was going there a lot when I was looking for the name of the band. I walked past one of those book return carts, it just had Suzzallo stenciled on the side of it. I looked at it and was like that just looks like a band name.
Also, it just seems like it could be the name of a dragon from some mystical story. And I just loved the way it looks in print with the two Zs and the two Ls and from that moment I was like, okay that’s going to be the name of the band.
And back to your other question about Star String Radio. So that song … basically, a few weeks before Kienan passed, April and Kienan were talking about ordering a string of lights for our deck. And we don’t really know how it happened because they never placed the order, so it was a few weeks after Kienan passed when this package arrived. We opened it and of course, we’re like, you know crying and devastated, we see it was the string of lights. Somehow this package got ordered and it was really hard, but we ended up deciding to hang the lights, because we thought that’s what Kienan would want.
And then this kind of mystical thing happened where we’d be talking about Kienan and the lights would start to flicker. We saw it enough times, and even some friends saw it, and we were like this is very strange. But we’ve we started to feel like it was like a communication from Kienan. And so that was the inspiration for Star String Radio. That string of lights became the star string radio for us.
That’s a beautiful story. And that’s very much like it’s kind of a sign of communication coming through from the other side. So my last question, what do you think Kienan would think of this project?
I think they would love it. I know that they’re with me, you know when I’m working on it and I feel like we connected on music so much. Kienan made amazing playlists and has very much been a part of this whole thing. I just think they’d be very happy with people’s response to it.
A quote that I kind of held on to through all this was basically that you want to try to be the things you loved most about the ones you’ve lost. And so I’ve tried to in my own way like try to emulate that. And for Kienan that was such a deep kindness, deep gentleness and compassion for others and always
being the first one in the room, to like if someone’s a little different, make them feel comfortable and bring them in and be very inclusive of people who might be a little different.
I feel like that’s part of the legacy to me from Kienan. It’s really just to try to show up in that way and be kind. And remember what’s important in life, which is people, and how you treat people. I think that spirit is in this record and in this project too. And I hope it helps bring meaning and light into people’s lives in some way. Because that’s what it’s doing for me.
