Page 13 - the NOISE August 2014

Kristian Bush:
From College roCK to PoP-Country With a Pit stoP For BaKed Beans
interview by
mike williamS
Singer / Songwriter Kristian Bush, formerly of Sugarland, is a character. This interview is easily a favorite because the guy was just so honest and positive. This writer caught up with him as he took a break down South in anticipation of his upcoming shows.
Right out of the gate, is this the first time you’ll be playing North- ern Arizona?
Yeah, it’ll be the first time as a solo artist. Sugarland played a bunch of places over there ... We played once in Flagstaff at the Orpheum Theater and, after that, we mostly played amphithe- ater stops in Phoenix.
How did you start out in music?
I was a teenager in the 80s and the idea of having a record deal was impossible at the time. So, I learned how to make al- bums by myself. Just going to the local recording studio, make albums as fast I could, do my own album covers for the cas- settes, and then just sell them to my friends. I’d save the money so I could make another record and I started doing that when I was about 13. So, when I was in college, by the time I was 19 or 20 years old, I’d made about seven or eight albums already. And they were terrible. Ha! Ha! But, I got the idea of how to do it and I just wanted to do it over and over and over again.
How about your roots? What was the beginning your experi- ence in music?
Well, I went to school in Atlanta, I came up in the Atlanta music scene, and I grew up in East Tennessee, the land of Dol- ly Parton. The radio stations I listened to as a kid and, until I discovered college rock, was kind of inundated with Alabama and Ronnie Milsap ... Stuff like that. It was just whatever your parents were listening to.
But as soon as I got into the bigger city in Knoxville and start- ed hearing R.E.M. and J.F.A. and Agent Orange and all the kind of weird bands, I was just “WHAT IS THIS?” I remember the first time I heard The Cure and it was like, “WHAT?” I didn’t know you could make music like this. The first time I heard R.E.M. I had no idea harmonies could be like that.
So, I had this huge expansion, but I was still a kid who grew up on country music, but I had to learn how to play that stuff ... I had to learn to play Van Halen songs. Mostly because, I knew I wanted a girlfriend really bad. Ha! Ha!
I thought playing guitar might help, I was a violin player when I was kid. So, by the time I moved to Atlanta, R.E.M. had really influenced that community in Georgia. The B-52’s were there, the Indigo Girls were there, the Black Crowes had just started. So, I was a kid who had made records since he was 13, sitting in a studio at 18 in Atlanta watching heroes do their work. And, ya know, they all took me under their wing and taught me “Hey look, you do have to do this by yourself. You can D.I.Y. it.”
The internet told us that you were the grandson of the Bush Brother’s Baked Beans company, which sounded too insane to be real ... But we were hoping it was nonetheless.
Ha! Ha! Not everything on the internet is true, but that actu-
INTERvieW
ally is. My granddad ran Bush Brothers, my dad worked there, and, until I was about 11, I really thought that my fate was go- ing to be running a cannery. This is just because I was the old- est, the first born in the family, and because you’re a boy, that’s just what you did. You get your can of beans and you go sell them. So, my family sold the business in the early 80s, when I was young. My brother and I are the first generation of Bush brothers to not actually be there.
How was that move taken by the family? Most families with a steady business hear their child wants to get into music and the immediate response is, “Oh, sh*t.”
Ha! Ha! And my family was no exception. Any family does this when you can’t pass it onto your kids. Where I fall as being the child in that dynamic was a lot of guilt. They felt terrible that they couldn’t pass this on, you know? But the result, they decided, was they could pay for us to be educated outside of the very, very small town we lived in. It was fortunate ... But strange though ... They sent us to a boarding school in Con- necticut from East Tennessee.
Things got real weird, real quick. My high school years were spent in an all-boys boarding school outside of Hartford and I’m not sure the family ever truly recovered. Interestingly enough, my brother and I both wound up in the music busi- ness. I sit with my own children now and show them Bush’s Beans they go, “No, Dad, our family doesn’t do beans, our fami- ly does music. That’s what we do,” and I’m just like, “Oh my God, this is an amazing, weird life.” Ha! Ha!
Many musicians we’ve interviewed, if you’re trying to make the jump into serious, career in music, seem to get a push somewhere they remember as that lightning moment that opened their eyes to actually being able to do it sustainably. Did you have one of those?
That’s a great question ... I can remember the moment I looked in the record store, just looking at albums, and I’d read the liner notes of albums I would buy. Maybe I was 13 or 14, but clandestinely I was in there to see if anyone had bought any of the ones I’d brought in. It turned out somebody had.
I remember looking at the back of a David Bowie record, where they list all of the people involved with the album and what their job was. There was about 35-40 people that worked on that record, then I got to thinking about how many records were in that room. There must have been a million and half names just right there. I thought to myself, “Holy crap, I’ve got a shot at this, at least being a name on one of these.” I hadn’t forged the idea of being an artist yet, but I’d definitely seen that it’s not impossible, just probably not very probable.
Then the first time I was in Atlanta, I met the Indigo Girls just at out at a bar. They were hanging in this local songwriter club and their gold record was on the wall. I asked, “So, you can do this, right?” and they said, “Oh yeah, it’s possible, it’s just a lot of work.” It was just once I met somebody in the flesh that had pulled it off, I just felt all you need was one “Yes.”
I just kept going and getting “No’s” until I started Sugarland, we got a couple “No’s” then got a couple “Oh, yeahs” pretty quick. We actually had to choose between them. Now, I’m talking to you however many years later, dumbfounded, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with two record deals at the same
time. I just have to pinch myself sometimes and I am so grate- ful I get to do the thing I love to do.
What did you get your degree from Emery in?
I was a creative writing major, the first one to graduate from that program. They made it while I was there. It was fascinat- ing, I had no idea you could get college credit for just making stuff up.
Was there that same panicked feeling of “Oh Lord, I got a degree in Creative Writing, what now?” that many on our staff felt upon graduating with a Journalism degree?
A little bit! I’d been sending letters to record companies for about four years by the time I graduated just asking for a record deal. And I’d gotten a response the latter part of my senior year from Atlantic Records in New York that said they were interested and could they please come down and see us play. They came down and saw us play and offered us a record deal. Ya know, it seems like a fairy tale. But, it’s not. It’s just a whole bunch of rejection that’s just starting now to look like a fairy tale.
Let’s get heavy for a minute and talk hats ... How did the trade- mark fedora come into play?
Well, a buddy of mine from Billy Pilgrim didn’t believe that I’d started a country band. So, I got on eBay and bought a cheap cowboy hat for like $9.95 or something like that. The shipping was more than the hat, I think. Ha! Ha! That was my way of saying we got a country a band here and I thought this would be a good way to let everyone know there’d been a change, like we’re not going to play the old rock songs, we are going to play the new ones, which sound suspiciously like the old rock songs.
Nobody really said anything about it, then about the second album, the photoshoot lady had brought a few hats to try on. I tried one on, it felt kind of funny, then all the girls around were like, “No, no, it looks great!” Ha! Ha!
Next thing I know, everyone else is making fun of me be- cause I have this fedora on until it got even weirder when oth- er people in country started to wear them. It was just culture and media, it wasn’t me, and I’ve been trying a baseball hat instead. Now, everyone is wearing baseball caps and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’m not afraid of man-style and I’ve never been afraid of man-style, there ain’t nothing wrong with showing on the outside how you feel on the inside.
We couldn’t agree more! Running to the far extreme, though, have you ever thought about embracing some more hardcore country imagery and adding a rattlesnake hatband to the fedora?
Ha! Ha! No, I haven’t, but, Hell, I’ll try anything once.
Awesome, Kristian, thank you so much. We’ll be sure to check you out at the Grant County Fair in Moses Lake on August 14 and again at the Rhythm and Ribs Country Festival in Cottonwood on September 3.
| Mike Williams knows his hats. music@thenoise.us thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • AUGUST 2014 • 13