Scott Kannberg Ascends Again as Spiral Stairs

You've heard of Pavement. They started making no sense in 1989 as a noisy instrumental guitar duo from Stockton, California, aka Mudville or Fat City. For those who don't know, there's that tall, brainy, dashing, singer guy named Stephen Malkmus, who rarely smiled. His partner-in-crime and sidekick also sang from time to time, and he always smiled. That guy is Scott Kannberg.

The band became a bigger deal after they died out, like everyone else in the nineties. But their demise wasn't due to drugs or suicide. Pavement left their legacy where it belongs, in the 90's, meaning they emerged around Christmas 1989 and expired around Thanksgiving Day 1999. They kept it together for 10 solid years, in a slow century, from the best decade ever. They came back to life for a quickie a decade later in 2010, dosing us with shows and appearances at most major music festivals around the world, truly getting their taste of what the major leagues chew-up and spit out these days.

It's been eight years since Kannberg released new material. His third LP, Doris and The Daggers, is set to be released under his original Spiral Stairs moniker March 24 via Nile Mile Records and Domino in the UK. It's a comeback album with a wealthy cast of guest musicians from bands like Broken Social Scene, The National, and Shudder To Think.

We sat down with Kannberg to talk about his new record and its unlikely collaborations; we also wanted to clear up some Pavement anecdotes once and for all.

Noisey: You've been moving around a lot more versus touring these past years. From Seattle, to Australia, to L.A, and now Mexico? What made you wanna become a Mexican?
Scott Kannberg: I'm now living in Merida, by the Yucatan Peninsula. It's a city of a million and basically on sea level, so it's hot as fuck. My wife's parents moved here and after visiting for years, we made the move. Los Angeles was just getting too expensive and our daughter was gonna start school. We decided, while she's young, let's move somewhere cheap and fun and that's what we did.

First time I played your new record, I didn't recognize your voice on the first track. The second track was so good that I thought I must've downloaded the wrong album. But in fact, it was you. What happened? Doesn't sound like the Spiral I know.
Yeah Yeah Well, I think it's just my influences since the last record. I've kinda matured more and I've learned how to sing a little more natural. I guess you can say I found my singing voice a little more. I enjoy singing kind of deep like Glen Campbell.

So you got a helping hand from some amazing Canadians on this record eh? Like the guy from Nickleback.
[Laughs] I think your getting confused with Kevin Drew.

Seriously, Kevin Drew and Justin Peroff of Broken Social Scene are all over this record. How did that come together?
Yeah well Kevin's been a friend for a long time obviously and we had this project we did for the Sled Island Festival in Calgary a long time ago where myself and my old drummer Darius got together with a bunch of the Broken Social guys and we formed this band called Human Milk. We made up these songs in Toronto over a couple days then flew to Calgary and played em live. One of the songs we wrote was called Emoshuns, which is on my new record. BSS also covered a Human Milk song on their last record called Texico Bitches which I sang on. There's some good songs from that band. So yeah, while we were in the studio, Kevin was in LA and I invited him to come sing on Emoshuns since he was apart of it already.

Justin's a cool dude and a buddy. We've worked on some shit together in Toronto and he also manages producer Harrison. Was Justin a dick to work with?
Well he did look at his phone a lot. Actually, lots of stuff was happening for Harrison at the time Justin was recording this record. He'd do a drum take and before the cymbal would stop ringing, I'd see him on his phone, calling or texting Harrison. I should've called the record Harrison. After my drummer Darius passed away, Justin was a friend of his as well, so I asked Justin to come and try to fill his shoes, and it was great. We jammed for a week and it came together beautifully.

Darius was penciled in to drum on this record originally. He's all over this record, in spirit.
Yeah totally. We had studio time booked up in Seattle but he died unexpectedly up in Vancouver. Kinda threw us all for a loop. But the thing is, so much good came out of it. This record became a much different thing then it was originally planned to be. There's some songs on the album that deal with him, like a verse in Angel Eyes. Another song, Exiled Tonight, is purely about him being kind of stuck in the afterlife and not being able to leave it. He was a cool dude.

Lots of horns on this record. Whats up with that? I never pictured you being a horny kinda guy.
I just listen to a lot of 70's records that have horns on them, like Captain Beefheart, Roxy Music, Van Morrison, Springsteen. All those horn arrangements are pretty cool and funky. My first Preston School Of industry record had horns on it. But the horns on this record are different. The first track Dance has a really cool horn arrangement in it that I try to make sound like an early Roxy Music song.

Jason Lytle of Grandaddy is in your new music video for "Dance." Pavement and Grandaddy were born and raised 15 minutes apart but yet had nothing to do with each other up until recently. Not only is Jason featured on your newest video but Stephen Malkmus placed a Grandaddy song for the Netflix series Flaked. What's with the new love and why did it take so long to bro down?
Right? Well I mean, I didn't know much about Grandaddy until the early days of Pavement. Grandaddy's first record came out on the same label as ours in England, Big Cat Records. I was like, what? From Where? A band from Mo-Town (Modesto) on our label? But yeah, I dug their records and I totally understood where they were coming from because they're from Modesto and all. Funny story, the first time I did kind of meet them was at hotel in Austin at SXSW. I was in a room full of band guys about to crash when we heard a knock at the door. It was the Grandaddy dudes, thinking we were having a party. I was half asleep and overheard people talking without lifting my head. I remember someone saying David Bowie loved the new Grandaddy record and I started laughing in mid-sleep like, yeah right, David Bowie likes the new Grandaddy record. But it's kind of come full circle now because that Dance song is kinda my stab at David Bowie and then I have Jason appear in the video.

Your song "Unconditional" is obviously about your daughter. Sounds like you two have lots of fun. How's Dad Life and how did it feel writing your first tune about your kid?
Writing that song came naturally. Being a daddy's cool. Though she was sick last week and had to go to the hospital overnight, so that wasn't so much fun but yeah, she's a cool kid and raised on cool music. She's got a lot of spunk.

Your newest album design is reminiscent of old Pavement stuff. I've never seen a straight line on any of your work. Everything is crooked and out of order. On top of that, your album titles correspond with my theory. Titles like Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain, Brighten The Corners…
Both Stephen and I came up with the artwork for our records. But yeah, you're right when you're talking about never seeing straight lines and mostly being crooked lines, I mean, look at where we come from. The Central Valley is pretty wacked out ya know. Fog in the winter, heat in the summer, you're always looking for some sort of fun ya know. The Valley's flat, we're always looking for landmarks, all we have is Mont-Diablo or the Sierra's. We have these weird landmarks and geographical things, and they're all sorta crooked, maybe that has something to do with it.

There's this story about Stephen record shopping in Austria in 1990 and overheard a Pavement song being played on the record store overhead. You personally sent that record store that promo. If you weren't sending out those demos to labels and zines, do you think Pavement would've existed?
Yeah that story is true. The band thing was serious in my mind. He thought it was cool but we just did that first single just to do it. We did get some good feedback on it and I think we sold over 1000. When he came back from his trip, I started another band while in school in Sacramento, thinking Stephen might not want to continue Pavement. When Steve came back, he was all "let's do another single" so we went from there and that got picked up by Drag City, so we kept doing it since people showed interest. Then it got a little more serious. But yeah, if I didn't send those demo's to all these labels and zines, maybe nothing would've happened. I always kept it going forward. In the beginning, I always wanted to take things to the next level. I loved REM & loved their ideas. They were my blueprint. I wanted to tour and put out records like them but it was pretty crazy at the time with our drummer Gary. You know Gary.. You brought Gary to my last show in Sacramento. He was so drunk.

I was speaking to Remko, Pavement's old sound guy, recently. I asked him why he thought Malkmus looked so unhappy in Pavement. Like, he looked uncomfortable most of the time. Remko says he never understood why. As if Malkmus was questioning his career path as a musician. It hit Remko when he saw Malkmus miserable by a beautiful beach in Australia. He had everything a young man wanted, but yet looked unsure. How rough was being in a band with moody Malkmus and do you find it easier operating solo?
You know, I think I just never really looked at that when I was in a band with him until the very end. I could never understand why he was unhappy about stuff. I never really understood it until I started my own band. I think the deal with Steve was he was just nervous. There's a lot of pressure with singing songs live and making records, which I know from my own experience now and it's stressful. Some people handle it better than others and I think that was the deal. But it came off as him being a dick or whatever. I dealt with it pretty good for all those years except for the very end. I wanted to go forward and felt he wanted to end it. We didn't agree on much towards the end. I don't think he was being a dick, it's hard to be the center of attention while the band behind you sucks.

A couple of true or false Questions before I let you go. Is it true your father was tight with George W. Bush?
No.

Did Bob [Nastanovich] of Pavement really hit a car while drunk driving a bus in New York?
Mostly true. I don't know if he was really drunk. More like he was up all night drinking and partying the night before. He went to work in the morning, driving a bus. He didn't just hit a car, he hit a cop car. So that's why he got in trouble.

Lastly, Are you out there to gain new fans with this record or simply trying to keep your old fans happy?
I don't know what to really expect. it's been seven or eight years since my last record. I hope my old fans are still around and love it. If I make new fans, that's cool too!

Mikey B. Rishwain is related to Robert Goulet and also the Artistic Director at M for Montreal.