High Places

Chief Magazine sat down with Mary and Rob of High Places to talk about intelligent dance music, the art of naming a band, and Rob's cats recent injury and resulting medical bills.






Chief Magazine: Did you have to pay a lot for it?

Rob: It’s been a bad week for money. Van got impounded, had to pay a parking ticket; it was a double whammy. And my cat broke its leg this morning, which is going to cost a lot of money. And my gas bill came for the winter, which is like 500 bucks.

I’m sorry, but before I get into questions...your cat, is it going to be okay? I guess its going to be fine…it? He? She?

Mary: She.

Rob: Yeah we’re going to go to the vet tomorrow.

How did she break her leg?

Rob: She got her arm caught in the drawer of a flat file. She was on top of the flat file. She tried to go down the side. You know how cats put their claws down and just kind of slide and jump? And her arm went into the flat file and she fell and broke it. Pretty bad too. That’s the thing I’m freaked out about.

I mean that’s the thing… I’ve never heard of that. I mean I guess every once in awhile you see an animal with a cast on it but I’d never actually known anybody.

Mary: Yeah.

Rob: I had the most maternal feeling ever. I mean, I seriously think I lactated when I was trying to rescue her from the drawer. Because I was trying to grab her and she’s hanging upside down and scratching the fuck out of me.

Sure, because she’s freaked out.

Rob: And I was just like, “MY BABY!”

Yeah.

Rob: She’s my interspecies life partner; she’s not my pet. I don’t condescend that way.

Alright, so. High Places. Rob and Mary, right? Very nice to meet you. So you guys got together about a year ago, is that right?

Rob: Yeah, a little over a year.

And you guys are dating?

Mary: No.

Rob: No.

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So did you guys meet and then start playing? Or had you been friends for a long time?

Rob: We met through mutual friends and then became friends. I was doing this mailband thing. I wanted to record songs through the mail with friends and she was just the most amped on it. At that point she lived in Michigan, and I lived here. Actually I met her through The Death Set.

Oh, okay.

Rob: Because she had played with them in her solo project. So I met her through Beau who was in The Death Set. Then I was on tour a couple weeks later, and she set up with Matt and Kim when we set up the show. So we got to be better friends. And she was the most amped on the mail project.

How did that work, the mail project?

Rob: Well, we never did it. But we were going to go on tour solo. I was like, "I want to tour this summer." And she wanted to go on tour too. And then when we realized that our songs kind of fit really well together, we just started putting them together. We actually took one of her songs and one of my songs and they pretty much fit onto each other. If you just took the recording of both and put it together they would fit.

Yeah, that’s awesome. What song was that?

Rob: "Sandy feat."

"Sandy feat." Oh, that’s on MySpace.

Mary: Mmmhmm!

Rob: Yeah, it’s a really old version. But there’s a new version on the seven inch. So that was the first song. I was supposed to play solo. This is a long story, I’m sorry.

No, bring it on!

Rob: I was going to play this solo show in Massachusetts with Japanther and like three days before I said, "Fuck it, let’s do a band." We made these songs in a couple days and then played this show in Massachusetts with them and then went on tour a couple weeks later.

Cool.

Mary: How much coffee did you have today?

Rob: Only a cup. Well, you made it.

Was it really strong? Is he talking a lot?

Mary: You can usually tell how much coffee he had.

Rob: Yeah it’s the one vice I have. I don’t have any others.

I mean you seem perfectly normal to me, but the question begs explanation.

Rob: It’s a good answer.

Mary: The answer? That I made the coffee?

Rob: No, no. It’s a good answer like how the band started. I’m proud of our starting answer story.

And you were playing with Japanther at that point?

Mary: Just a show. And then actually our first show was also with Japanther, in Massachusetts.

Are you from Michigan?

Mary: Yeah.

Where are you from?

Rob: But I met you through The Death Set.

Mary: Right. Well, Beau was touring with Japanther.

So it was a happy coincidence.

Mary: I lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Cool. I’m from Novi.

Mary: Oh really?

Rob: I’m from Philadelphia.

Very cool. Let’s see... This has been a crazy, crazy week.

Rob: Yeah it has.

I guess for you guys too—the van, the cat, the gas bill…

Rob: Good things have happened this week too.

Yeah? Let’s hear some good things. I need a couple.

Rob: This is a good thing. The show was a good thing. We played a six-hour show on Wednesday.

And where was it at again?

Rob: John Connelly Presents. In Chelsea. It was inside an installation. It was pretty awesome. Did you see it at all? That show?

No. Totally, totally missed it.

Rob: It was assume vivid astro focus.

Mary: It’s the name of the collective that does it.

Rob: It’s just a bunch of crazy insanity sensory stuff, but it’s pretty weird playing it.

Cool. You guys did all the art for the seven inch, right?

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Rob: Yeah.

Do you guys consider yourselves artists, do you do that? Or did you just decide for this one that you would draw some shit?

Rob: If I had to put it on my tax return I’d say maker of stuff. Or maker of shit.

Mary: He teaches printmaking classes.

Rob: Yeah I do art stuff. But I think I’m more of a hobbyist these days.

Mary: I draw for fun. I make zines and stuff.

Rob: We make a lot of stuff, we just don’t have a crazy agenda with it.

Right, right.

Mary: I didn’t study art or anything. I studied music.

Yeah, you have a background?

Mary: Yeah. I play the bassoon.

Can you tell me about that?

Mary: I studied orchestral music performance for bassoon. So that’s kind of the route I was going until I moved here a year ago.

So what were you doing a year ago?

Mary: I graduated from college.

And at that point you thought you would be going where?

Mary: To grad school or auditioning for orchestras.

And what made you—

Mary: I think meeting Rob and wanting to go on tour and write my own music for awhile. I played in bands in Michigan, and I had my solo project. I was just kind of worn out with the whole audition process. I actually applied to a bunch of grad schools and decided not to go.

With those bands in Michigan were you playing the bassoon?

Mary: I started out playing bassoon, and bass, and keyboards, and then I ended up becoming the singer just because our singer left and we needed someone, and that was my first time singing in a band. And then I started the solo project. Which was just really minimal singing, playing bassoon, playing glockenspiel.

Rob: IDM.

What’s IDM?

Rob: Intelligent Dance Music.

Intelligent Dance Music?

Mary: With bassoon. I think our two styles blended with the kind of music we were making.

And what’s your background? You studied art, right?

Rob: Yeah. I went to art school.

Here in the city?

Rob: I went to SVA for grad school. But that’s not like an endorsement. Grad school is pointless, don’t go to grad school.

I went to SVA for undergrad.

Rob: Undergrad’s cool. I never had any art classes until I went to school but I just made a lot of stuff. So it was a little bit of an eye opener when I actually went to school, so it was good, I think, but—

You can learn from any experience.

Rob: Grad school was just financially like getting my ribs cracked. It was just horrible. But musically, I grew up on hardcore.

Hardcore…

Rob: Like punk, like fast mosh, hard stuff. I still like a lot of that stuff but I don’t go to those shows or anything.

You could die.

Rob: You could die, actually. It’s dangerous.

Especially now with YouTube, seeing people getting severely injured. There was one recently where there was a dude in a mosh pit who just got destroyed.

Rob: It's different now. No one plays fast anymore. Well, some people play fast. But it’s all just the mosh part. It’s just one giant mosh pit.

Mary: Like our songs.

Rob: Yeah.

Totally hardcore.

Rob: I mean I don’t want to be like, back when I was 14 it was different. I like fast, noisy hardcore. I played in weird hardcore bands. None that were noteworthy. I was in a couple weird bands that did what I think were really rad, but we didn’t actually do much as far as playing out a lot.

Right. So when did you first start playing in a band?

Rob: My first band where I was actually writing music was this band Plastik Caskit.

Casket or Gasket?

Rob: Casket. It’s kind of a bummer name. It was with Ian from Japanther.

Mary: Plastic is totally not biodegradable.

Rob: I know. It was a total downer name. It was like non-degradable Casket. It was the first band I wrote music in that wasn’t just in a garage for fun. I mean, it was fun. Then I did this band called Bad Waste that was just an excuse for my friend Isaac and I to go camping.

Why, you went camping and played?

Rob: We went on tour and we would just go camp on tour. And we never played New York.

You guys just got done with a tour, right? In Michigan?

Mary: Yeah.

Rob: Mini tour. It was only like a few shows.

Mary: We went to the Midwest for five days.

And how was that?

Mary: It was really good. We played at an elementary school.

That’s cute.

Mary: Yeah, we were asked to write the theme song, so we went and performed for the students.

And you wrote the theme song for an elementary school?

Rob: Yeah they choreographed a dance to it. So when were playing, we had no idea what it was. And all of a sudden there were like 200 kids jumping up and down. I mean it seemed really druggie to me, because our music is—I mean we’re not like druggie people but our music sounds sort of druggie… it’s like druggie children’s music.

Bystander: Hiiiiigh places, man.

Rob: That’s more in the Biblical sense. We’re very spiritual. We get lots of emails, people make word puns on high all the time.

I didn’t even think of that as a reference to drugs.

Mary: It’s not. I don’t care if people do. I just like that it has different interpretations.

Rob: We were trying to find a name, which is an annoying process.

Yeah because everything sounds weird when you first say it, right?

Mary: And then you get into that obsessive mind frame where everything could be a band name.

Do you know what I always wondered about? How did Korn come up with their name? We’ll spell it with a K and put the r backwards, and that will be good, you know?

Rob: I think it’s kind of a rad name for what they do.

I know, but every band goes through that initial process of coming up with a name.

Rob: I wanted to call a band Lassie once but it didn’t go over well.

But High Places, how did that come about?

Rob: Well, a certain website I don’t want to say…this guy Tom started this website that links bands and people together, and I had my influences on that, and one of my influences on that was High places. Actually physically going to them. I like climbing shit. Edit out any curse words.

Mary: Just don’t say them.

Rob: I’m trying to clean up my mouth.

Actually, Chief will not be editing out any curse words.

Rob: Well you can at least see that I mean well. Anyway, I just physically like places that are high. It cleans you out. You know when you’re bummed and you want to get perspective on things, where do you go? You ride across the bridge or something and you can see far. As soon as you can see far you realize that you’re not in this tunnel.

And you just thought, "that’s cool"?

Mary: Yeah.

Rob: She was baaaked.

Mary: Brownies!

Yeah!

Rob: Just going over and over again, like, it’s funny.

So what did you just call your music? Druggie children’s music?

Rob: No, it just sounds like druggie children’s music. It’s straightedge druggie children’s music.

Because I think it’s kind of refreshing and comforting at the same time. At first when I thought how I would describe it, I thought comfort food, but comfort food is really heavy, and your music is also relaxing and refreshing. So how would you describe it, if not druggie children’s music?

Rob: That was the jokey answer.

Mary: I always have trouble answering this question. It’s hard to put it in two or three words.

Rob: I think about it more when I listen to music. I want to feel a certain way when I listen to it. So if I listen to hardcore it’s because I want to mosh around my bedroom, because I’m in the mood for aggressive music. When I was starting to think about what I would want to do with my next band, at the time a lot of bands were going really over the top. There are all these bands that I really love that are totally crazy loud, and I’ve been in bands that are crazy loud. But the bar was so high with intensity, so I thought I wanted to create, at least on my end, an environmental space that had some kind of power to it. Not to sound New Agey.

Mary: I think we both wanted to have a band that wasn’t conventional instrumentation; guitar, bass, drums, so we like to use different found sounds or sounds that we manipulate somehow. But then we also really like pop melodies and good hooks.

Rob: Beat Happening was a huge influence on us.

Mary: I think in our music people hear those two ends of it, maybe some weird percussion stuff going on. Even now and then we’ll have like noise elements going on. But a lot of the time my vocal melodies and more melodic instrument playing will give it more of a pop feeling.

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So what kind of gear to you guys use? What do you play on, is it different on every show?

Mary: I think it’s kind of evolving. I’m starting to play more stuff live. Originally I just wanted to sing. We wanted someone who can be looking up at people instead of fiddling knobs. And my forte is wind instruments; it’s a little hard to do that and sing at the same time. Lately I’ve wanted to play more instruments, so I’m starting to play more live, percussion stuff and recorders.

So you have to find stuff you can also sing while playing.

Mary: We do like to have a lot of vocal stuff driving the songs.

And then in your recorded stuff I guess you can add a lot more?

Mary: Yeah.

So would you say your recorded sound and your live sound is pretty different?

Rob: No. Well first my angle about the last question. I wanted to be in a band that had a really engaged person with the crowd, but that’s not my personality because I’m totally shy when I play. It’s hard for me to even make eye contact with people because I get weirded out. So we just kind of took different roles because of our strengths. She has more of a performance background so she was comfortable. That’s what it was for me. But also, when we make music, a lot of the stuff we make is us manipulating, tapping on things like salad bowls. And you can’t do that live. So our live set up right now is almost like a dub band setup, where there’s a sound system with us running a lot of sounds that we’ve collected and altered and changed. We don’t jam, really, Most of our songs are pretty set form. The endings tend to get looser but the actual pop songs tend to be tighter.

Mary: They reflect our short attention spans.

Rob: Her solo songs and my solo songs are usually like a minute long.

Mary: I hit fifty seconds and I’m like, done!

Rob: And she’s been wanting to play longer songs and we had four minutes and I felt like we were Rush or something.

Mary: And even our longer songs are really like four short songs stuck together.

Rob: For me it comes from hardcore. I remember seeing bands play ten minutes and somebody’s amp would blow up and the show would be over.

Mary: I’d rather play too short. Some bands go on and on.

Rob: That’s what we’re afraid of. We play for twenty minutes and we start to get freaked out.

Mary: It’s like we’re getting bored with it.

Rob: When you’re in a band and you’re playing a song that’s two minutes long it feels like it’s six minutes long. You can just multiply any time by three and that’s how long it feels like you’re playing.

Who’s the kid on your Myspace page?

Rob: Me.

Mary: No, it’s my niece.

And her name’s Brooklyn? That’s awesome.

Rob: She lives in Arizona.

Mary: Her parents have never been anywhere near Brooklyn.

Really? So why did they name her Brooklyn?

Mary: My sister wanted to ever since she was a little kid. I actually saw this shirt at a children’s boutique that said “A Child Grows in Brooklyn” and I was like, that’s so hilarious! Then I was like, wait a second, if my niece wears that is it going to look like she is pregnant?

That is weird. At the Brooklyn Institute they have little baby bibs that say Made in Brooklyn, I bought one for my friend who’s pregnant.

Mary: Oh my niece can do that when she has a baby. That’ll be awhile.

Just imagine, in 20 or 30 years time, she can do that. She’ll have to shop the vintage stores to find one.  You mentioned the zines earlier, tell me about that. You make zines and hand them out at every show?

Mary: No, I’ve made a few different ones. When people buy a demo or something we’ll hand them out. We don’t really have any right now but I’m working on a new one.

Rob: I almost said I’m zine-ophoibic. Not xenophobic, like fear of foreigners. But I’ve started so many zines that I just never finish. I’m kind of the same way with music.

Mary: But we’re going to finish one. We’re going to do a split one this summer.

Rob: I’m into it. When I work with other people and stuff I can totally do it. But for some reason when it’s just me, I’m like who wants to read this? Who would even want to see this? I get tired of it before I even finish. I love them though. I’m not saying I’m against them. For me it’s hard. I have a block. A zine block.

Mary: Rob and I were just saying the other day since we live together and we’re such good friends, it’s a weird dynamic because people assume you’re either related or dating if you’re a guy and a girl hanging out all the time. But we both date other people. For us, our band, we can do stuff like make zines together, or go on tour, and it just kind of feels like hanging out. So the band feels like more than just when we make music together.

It’s almost like you’re a collective.

Rob: More like a cult.

Cult of two.

Rob: We were wondering, could we add a third person to this band? I don’t think so. I don’t think we could have a third person in this band.

It would alter it so drastically, right?

Mary: Since Rob studied art, I started music, and we both have different backgrounds, came from different areas, we figured out how we work together. Someone was trying to get me to say the power dynamic in High Places, like there’s got to be one person doing everything or something, but it’s completely not like that.

Rob: We fill in each other’s gaps.

Mary: We don’t each agree on every single thing, but for the most part, I know Rob’s strengths, he knows my strengths. And there are other things we’re equal on, we both work on it. Most things we both agree on and write together.

Rob: I tend to work really chaotically. I make a lot of stuff, like I’ll make tons of parts without her, it’s just because my attention span goes crazy, and she has to say, wait a minute, you just did way too much stuff. Like it won’t fit with all the stuff she’s working on. And then we’ll have this enormous amount of parts that will never see the light of day as High Places because we’re not working together. So usually what works best is we do this little Exquisite Corpse thing when we work together. So sometimes when we try to work too separately—

It’s a little piecemeal?

Mary: Yeah it just sounds like our two solo projects.

Rob: Right, yeah. I’ll just be like can we use this part? And she’ll be like there’s no way I could write something to that because I wasn’t with you when you made it, or it just limits her somehow, like I already made a melody and it locks her into having to fit that. She tends to be more the melodic hook. Well, no…

Mary: I’m kind of minimal and sloppy about things too. Well, not sloppy, because I think I’m the one who figures out when things are sloppy. I really like to be immediate about things; maybe I’m more impatient. Just like, let’s do this! And you are more like, let’s layer a million parts and get it really intricate.

Rob: An analogy for her process would be like an Etch A Sketch. But I’m kind of like some Howard Hughes person. Seriously, if you replaced the urine sample jars that Howard Hughes did with weird recordings—that’s a weird analogy, right? Like I make all this crap and then I categorize it and then I overanalyze the crap out of it. I think you’re just more fluid with how you work, and I’m way more obsessive compulsive.

Mary: I think you’re really creative. You think more aesthetically and I think more about if something is out of tune.

Rob: She’s Mike Love and I’m Brian Wilson.

Mary: I’m George Harrison.

Rob: No way!

Mary: I don’t want to be George.

Rob: You’re fully Ringo. Which is cool, I like Ringo.

Mary: I’m Paul.

Rob: You’re Paul. You’re the dork.

Mary: You’re John.

Rob: I’m not John! John’s an ass!

Mary: Okay.

Rob: He was a jerk. I’m George. I’m a combination of George and Ringo.

Mary: Okay.

Rob: No, I don’t want to compare us to The Beatles.

Mary: Okay!

Just be yourselves, guys! You know?

Rob: I’m Howard Hughes and she’s an Etch A Sketch.

Real quick and then I’m done with the zines. What are they about? Are they just random stuff that you think of?

Mary: They’re usually a lot of drawings and then just random little thoughts. A lot of times I do them when I’m writing a song so it’s hard not to correlate the two. I’m not trained as an artist. I just like to draw.

Now your song-making process together. You said you are often making a bunch of bits separately. You said you live together, so are you just making stuff in your apartment?

Mary: Yeah we do everything in our apartment. Like we can practice in there, too.

Rob: It’s a cult. But there’s no cult leader.

Mary: We are planning to orbit the earth soon.

Maybe you guys are equal leaders of the cult.

Mary: Yeah, totally. Actually we have a boy cat and a girl cat and they are members also.

Rob: We could start collecting cats as our family.

Mary: I don’t think we can do that.

This is a classic Chief question. It doesn’t have to be sometime together, or it could be. Can you guys tell me sometime you thought you were going to die, or sometime you were so embarrassed you wished you had died?

Mary: I know one time you thought you were going to die. I was driving one time on tour through South Dakota in the middle of the night and there were all these deer in the expressway and Rob was getting something out of the van and moved to windshield and almost died. Because I was trying to save all the deer.

Rob: That’s not the time I almost died. I’d say the time I almost died is when I was surfing in January last year and it was pouring rain and it was a really crazy storm. I couldn’t even see land anymore. I took a bad spill and got caught in the break area and I still couldn’t see land. It was really disorienting. It was really early in the morning, right at dawn, so it was really dark, too.

What were you doing surfing at dawn?

Rob: I only like surfing in the winter on the East Coast. And fall.

Wow. That’s hardcore. Do you snowboard too then?

Rob: No, I like skiing. Skiing is classy. I mean classic. It’s classic.

Mary: When did I think I was going to die? I had this weird flash on Havemeyer. I just had this weird thought one time when I was biking that this is the street I’m going to die on, some car is going to hit me some day on my bike. I don’t know why.

Really hope that doesn’t come true.

Mary: Yeah so I haven’t been riding on it lately. So hopefully I don’t die biking on Havemeyer. I don’t remember the last time I was really embarrassed.

So do you guys have anything you want to say to the people who are going to be reading this interview, anyone who listens to your music? Anything you want them to think?

Rob: Don’t stay in school and don’t do drugs.

Mary: Don’t do drugs. What do I want them to think about our music?

Rob: I just want people to be nice. We’ve never had any problems with anything bad happening to us at a show. Worst thing that happened is someone threw a beer can at her head.

That’s terrible!

Rob: No it was rad. It was amazing. I didn’t care at all. We played this show with Lightening Bolt.

Mary: You didn’t care?

Rob: Well I mean I wasn’t bummed. We played this show with all friends. It was BARR, Marnie Stern, Ecstatic Sunshine, and Lightening Bolt. It was huge. It was the biggest show that Todd Patrick ever did, I think. We were playing and someone threw a beer can. It’s a Lightening Bolt thing, if you’re Lightening Bolt that’s like praise, like “I salute you.” I know they’re not keen on it, but it happens. But with us it’s more of an “I don’t like this.”

Mary: That’s why I don’t play my bassoon live.

Rob: But there were so many rad people and it was such a fun time.

Mary: We were like, "1299 people didn’t throw beer cans at my head!"

That’s true. I like that you guys have this nice mantra.

Rob: Well that was a big influence in starting the band. I wanted to be the most un-New York band from New York.

Which would be being a nice band.

Rob: No not that people aren’t nice. People are nice here.

I think there’s a real trend lately, well there has been since the 90s, of just sad and angry music, and that gets all the play. There’s not enough music that makes you feel like life is okay.

Mary: The thing about New York and Brooklyn that I’ve noticed coming from a smaller area of the country, is that most areas have a specific sound, and not all the bands fall into that category but that’s what people want to hear. But here people are very open-minded and accepting. Just the fact that we haven’t had any problems other than one beer can thrown at my head. People are totally open-minded about what were doing.

Rob: Surprisingly. I thought people were going to hate us when we started.

Actually, I read your blog about discrimination against women. You were saying for the most part you find people really open-minded but not always.

Mary: Yeah there’s some weirdness. I feel a little embarrassed about my reasoning. I did sing a lot at the beginning. But then we found this weird discrimination about women who only sing in bands. People just treated it like Rob’s band, like he hired a singer or something. So we’ve encountered a few things like that, where people only talk to Rob, or ask Rob about his band when I’m standing right there. And I know a lot of our collaboration goes on at home when we’re recording and things like that so people don’t see it. But there has been some discrimination. Which is funny because I’m the one who went to music school and Rob went to art school. But it’s humbling.

It’s also cool because you’re breaking that as well. Because you’re not that stereotype.

Mary: My sister saw us play and paid us one of our biggest compliments, saying that she thinks our band completely doesn’t give in into standard gender stereotypes. She thought it represented our friendship well and how the two of us get along and collaborate.

Rob: People seem shocked that you can do a band and not be girlfriend and boyfriend. Or a divorced couple.

Mary: Or a dude who hired some women to sing for him.

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Website
www.myspace.com/hellohighplaces


Photos
Nate Dorr
Mimi Cabell
Aron Wahl

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