| Shannon
Selberg Interview |
thoughts
that you should fill the role of a man jumping around
on the stage
for Cows, did you have some theater training that you wanted
to bring to the stage?
A: I was going to community college, and had always been
really shy, and I was majoring in history and political
science. I wanted to become a teacher. I took a speech
class just for the hell of it. I noticed that when I
got in front of people that something kind of came over
me. I put my speech down and kind of went crazy, and
the whole room clapped. I thought that was great. During
that time is when I saw Cows play, and I thought that
if I got up there, and whatever that was that came over
me happened while I was singing for them, then that
would be pretty intense and be fun to watch.
Q: What
led you to coming out to New York after the end of
Cows, and eventually forming The Heroine Sheiks?
A: Cows
at this point had been around for about 11 years, and
had put out a lot of albums. We had three alpha males
together for an awful long time, and communication started
breaking down. We had a tour schedule in
1997 that was too much for us;
it was
like 9 months. It wore us
down. Not much was
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happening
that summer, and nobody wanted to practice. Also, I
really hate Minnesota winters, so I told the guys that
I was going to leave before the snow flies, if we are
going to do anything. I had a chance to come here for
free with really cheap rent, so I just jumped on it.
We still put out an album after that.
Q: There seems to be a little bit of similarity between
some of the later Cows works, and some of the Heroine
Sheiks material, which makes me think that you probably
had a bit more to do with the songwriting than I think
that you are given credit for. Am I correct in thinking
that you were lending a bit to the songwriting?
A: We were all sort of just developed. For most of
us, it was
our first band. We didn’t know what we were doing
all that
well.
People would comment on how shitty the early albums
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sounded.
We
didn’t mix them that way on purpose. We thought
that we were really tight, and that the albums sounded
really good. We played them in front of other people
and they stated that it really sounded fucked up and
primitive. We didn’t dislike it, but we were surprised
by the reaction to it. The comments were that it was
just a bunch of unhinged music and barely music. We didn’t
know that. It sounded like music to us.
Q: You moved through a few different sound engineers in
recording your albums; do you credit them with the change
in the sound of the band?
A: In the early
days, I don’t think that Kevin and
Thor were much concerned with whether the tones were actually
meshed together very well. They played in a lot of the same
frequencies, and I think that was pretty hard to mix. However,
by the last couple of records I think that they were more
aware of that, and especially Buzz, I think was aware that
was something to work on. The thing everyone said about Cows
was that the albums couldn’t really capture the live
set, and every producer we had said that we had to capture
whatever it is in the live set, and try to make the band
sound live. Buzz was the first guy that came in and said, “Fuck
it, I don’t care about that. We need to put out a great studio
album, and whatever it is
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