THE MAKING OF the sophtware slump BY Grandaddy - FEATURING jason lytle

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

Grandaddy formed in Modesto, California in 1992 by Jason Lytle, Kevin Garcia and Aaron Burtch. Jim Fairchild and Tim Dryden joined in 1995 as Grandaddy put out several self-released cassettes. After signing with Will Records, they released their debut album, Under the Western Freeway, in 1997. For their second album, Grandaddy signed with V2 and began recording in a farmhouse outside of Modesto in 1999. The Sophtware Slump was eventually released in the year 2000.

In this episode, Jason Lytle looks back on how The Sophtware Slump came together. This is the making of The Sophtware Slump. 

Jason Lytle: My name is Jason Lytle and I’m the lead dude from a band called Grandaddy talking about an album we made called The Sophtware Slump. I’m just so amazed that it kind of became what it became to so many people. But obviously at the time, I’m drowning in self doubt. When you’ve tracked mostly everything by yourself and then you killed yourself mixing it and then you had to suffer through mastering it (laughs). I mean I was just, I needed a break from it. That’s what it was. I was too close to it. On one hand, it’s kind of cool when I don’t know what I’ve made, that’s kind of an indication that I’m on to something at least interesting. But definitely there wasn’t a point of confidence where I was just like, “Oh man, heck yeah. I’m gonna blow people’s minds with this one. Get ready world. Here we go.” It was never, like the furthest thing from that. 

I will try hard to remember what it was like around the recording of The Sophtware Slump. We had just gotten done doing a bit of touring around Under the Western Freeway, which was an album that came before that. And it ended up being one of those situations where we did this really modest release with it and then it just kind of, you know, we were like, “Oh whatever,” and then all of the sudden, something happened, some word got out and then there was some label interest and then all of the sudden there was this excitement happening that was happening a little bit over here but even more so overseas. So based on the activity of Under the Western Freeway and a lot of demo songs that I had, we’d actually gotten a recording deal. And that was really exciting to me because at that point, I was really excited about recording and it was all so fresh and new. It was just a new frontier for me. At this point, we’d gotten this house out in the country about forty miles east of Modesto, which Modesto is already kind of podunk to begin with but I had to take it even a bit further. It was this big sprawling house on forty acres and we just hauled everything out there and we’re hanging out, you know we kind of turned into a bit of a commune. We would rehearse out there for tours and then we would make records and just set up gear all over the place and experiment with all kinds of different recording techniques. And I remember as I was finishing, Under the Western Freeway, we had all just heard OK Computer for the first time and it was just like, I think there was one song left to go on Under the Western Freeway and we heard OK Computer and that had just completely blown my mind. And I was already fixated on how exciting and futuristic and weird and kind of enigmatic maybe the record could be and that definitely paved the way or sort of started planting the seeds for The Sophtware Slump. And eventually we moved out of that sprawling commune cause I realized I liked working efficiently and quickly and there was just too much back and forth, driving, you know sometimes you’d have to go get two little adapters at Radio Shack and that would eat up like a half a day. So I just realized efficiency was going to be the name of the game and just working around the clock. I got a little farmhouse that was situated just outside of Modesto and we set up all the gear in there. It was actually this Portuguese farmer and he had a bunch of vineyards and orchards around and I was just the weirdo guy that lived out in his garage. They had this kind of detached garage in-law apartment situation happening and we just hauled all the gear in there and I just lived in it and worked round the clock and the band would come and go and come and go. But that was, we called it “Little Portugal,” that was where we recorded the album, The Sophtware Slump. 

I was definitely a man with a mission on Sophtware Slump. I was just so focused that I had such a clear idea. I spent a lot of time by myself and I spent a lot of time really kind of mapping out what I was after. And if anything, it was this culmination of all of this new exciting gear that I’d acquired and just this state of naivety that I was in just with recording and how excited I was about way less constraints and just being a little bit more experimental. I think I was excited about a lot of music that was happening at the time. This was this period in time too where it was way more common for bands to be making records at home and they were starting to sound pretty good too. Like all this gear had become just user friendly enough to where you didn’t have to have first and second engineers. It was becoming way more DIY-friendly and the quality of gear that you could get that was way more DIY-friendly was allowing people to make pretty good, full range, better sounding records and a lot of that analog gear that was getting sold off because everyone was getting so excited about digital platforms whether it be ADATs or computers, a lot of that analog stuff was coming up super cheap. I kind of clued in to the concept early on that having a hybrid situation of doing certain things on analog, certain things on digital and then combining them, you kind of get the best of both worlds. I think people do a lot more of that now, but it was still kind of like a wild idea back then (laughs). The whole Central Valley is really dusty. It’s harvesting season between like July and September so it’s just like, yeah everything is always covered in dust it seemed the whole time. But the heat was a big deal. If I remember correctly, I just had one of those crappy little AC wall units that I bought myself and just shoved into one of the windows and it kind of did the job but no matter what, you’re gonna be sweltering. And there was a fair amount of analog gear that was crammed into my little bedroom slash control room too, which had a one inch 16-track, no one inch 8-track reel to reel machine in there, I had this big Soundcraft console, a couple of ADAT machines that are tied together, but then I had racks of compressors and preamps. And I’m sure everything was probably on most of the time (laughs) so you can imagine the amount of heat that that generates in an already hot room. It just got a bit comical. I was just in there in my boxers, just like sweating on a continual basis. I don’t know, that was all part of it. You just kind of get used to always being hot when you grow up in that area of California. I mean if anything that imposes this sort of necessary little bit of pressure to get the take right. It’s just like, “alright, the longer the AC stays off, the more broiling it’s going to get so the quicker I get this take down…” It’s like, who knows how much of the recording was actually affected by that (laughs). It could have been a lot of situations where I’m like, “fuck it, that’s good enough. I can’t take this anymore.” I have pretty good stamina already as it is and I can go, you know, even with athletic pursuits and like cycling and running and stuff, I like kind of going long and pushing myself. But it’s like, with music and creativity, there’s actually something else that happens where it’s like you get these really wild results when you start pushing yourself past the brink. But back then it was like my small town version of it was I would just kind of push it a little bit far with the alcohol and every now and then if I wanted to really extend the race, then maybe there was some speed-y stuff that I brought into the equation (laughs). But it’s not sustainable and if anything, a key thing that I learned was, it seems like a good idea at first and you actually might get some interesting results for a little while but it’s not sustainable. I mean usually the big trick is like, “how can I turn reality off? How can I not think about bills and not think about car insurance and not think about all these sort of worldly concerns that are just everyday nonsense. And think differently and unlock these little doors in my head that are kind of stuck due to the heaviness of reality. 

"He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot"

“He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” the lead track. If I remember correctly, this was later in the process. Like I don’t feel like the album had a very interesting beginning and I can’t remember who was trying to be the first song at one point but it just wasn’t like, I wasn’t feeling it. I think it was a last minute decision to put something that long and that sort of experimental as the lead track. I’m glad we did. A lot of people are like, couldn’t imagine it any other way so that’s cool. For me personally, it’s a bit of a cautionary tale. Grandaddy as a band had gone from total obscurity other than just like a few little venues and coffeehouses and whatnot around town and then all of the sudden we’re on planes, with gear, and we’re playing in other countries and we’re getting taken out to dinner and you know, we’re getting press in these well known magazines overseas. I don’t know, I’ve read the stories. I see how things tend to kind of, there’s a common unfortunate trajectory that kind of happens in a lot of situations like this. And for me, it was a cautionary tale, it was just like, “don’t get too big for your britches. All these new people who are telling you all these things. Don’t forget who you are, don’t forget where you’re from.” And I think most of all, that’s what that song is. Sort of me, just kind of having that talk with myself. And yeah trying to do it in a three part way based on my obsession with “Paranoid Android” a year before that (laughs). Like I look back at the masters of “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” and there’s multiple versions of each section and yeah I had to mix them together. I remember taking that to mastering going, “Can you piece these together? Can you piece these three parts together and make them sound like one song?” And he’s like, “Yeah no problem.” So that was a big relief. Because it was all kind of in my head but whether or not they could be assembled and sound seamless was a whole other matter. 

The fact that it’s that long puts a lot of pressure on the buildup being interesting and things moving and evolving and making sense sonically. That’s why it’s always nerve-wracking, I’ve done scaled down acoustic versions of it and it just like, it drives me insane because you don’t have all those building elements and they’re so crucial to making that song kind of work. Yes I snuck in the keyboard riff, that annoying melody from “A.M. 180” into “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot.” It’s something that I pointed out a few times on different, you know Instagram or Twitter or whatever. I’ll get chatty with fans and I mention the fact that it’s in there or people will find it themselves and it’s always a cool little nugget. You gotta listen pretty hard but it’s there and it’s undeniable. “A.M. 180” was, it wasn’t a big hit, it became very popular and it became this inescapable, the song actually ended up in this movie called 28 Days Later, which was like this big zombie movie back then and countless people were just like, “oh I discovered you guys through hearing that song in the movie.” And that was exactly why I put that song in there. It was probably the closest thing to getting lots of adulation and notoriety from this far reaching number of people and just be like, “uh it’s just this thing, this song that I made out in some crappy country house with an annoying melody.” But yeah, that song in particular was just like, “Don’t let all the talk and don’t let all the hype and just keep doing your thing.” At some point, it does serve you well just to put on the blinders. Not that you can’t appreciate all the cool weird stuff that comes along with all the experiences that you have. You know, leaving your hometown and seeing the world and stuff but it was still, it was just like, “keep your head on straight.” 

I was a huge Kiss fan when I was a little kid. Ace Frehley who was my favorite member of Kiss, he does a version of “2000 Man,” and that was the version that I knew my whole life. I was just like, “Yeah Ace Frehley, ‘2000 Man!’” So I didn’t even know that it was a Rolling Stones song. I didn’t know Rolling Stones had a song called “2000 Man,” I thought it was Kiss. But I love the fact that it exists in its own weird way. Any time there’s like some dude floating in space or somebody floating in space on a long tether who’s just looking at, more so than anything else, I think it’s like being on this side and looking out at the world. I feel like I did a lot of that when I was a little kid. My mom and dad divorced and my mom used to move to all these different places when I was a little kid and she would always work. So I was just sort of left to wander around while she was at work and I did a lot of sitting and like people watching or just world watching. I wasn’t necessarily in the house playing video games or watching TV and it’s crazy to think now that she was fine with, you know, probably like 7 or 8 or 9 just wandering the streets by myself. And I think it’s like, the shipwreck, the guy lost at sea or the cosmonaut floating in space, tether, that’s just like imagery that I can latch onto pretty easily. I don’t know, it’s just part of my personality I suppose. 

The Elliott Smith connection with the second section of “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” the slow kind of pretty, “did you love this world and this world not love you?” part. There’s kind of a cool little side story to that too because we did a tour, a fairly decent size tour of the U.S. with Elliott and his band. You know, say you’re a bigger act, you’re gonna go on tour and then the label will send you all these potential openers so we ended up being pitched to Elliott and he was into it. Apparently he was a fan of the album, he’d been listening to it, but we had, it was like one of the first or second nights we were on tour and we had a day off and we were hanging out. Like all of us, Grandaddy guys and Elliott and his band were hanging out kind of on the grassy area in this hotel and we’re just meeting each other and we’re talking and stuff and Elliott started talking about that song. There’s one weird spot in that section where I throw in this strange chord that isn’t happening anywhere else. It’s right before the (sings synth melody line), it’s like after the vocals kind of trail off and then the synth solo really kicks in full bore. And I just sort of slip in this A chord or something that doesn’t happen anywhere else and that’s what he mentioned. He’s like, “Yeah man, like it’s happening and then...that chord.” (laughs) Which I love that, that’s just like, of course there’s tons of other crap going on in the song and all kinds of things he could mention, he hones in on that one little immediate, one time only happening chord shift. Yeah apparently he liked that song well enough and I think it was his idea. We started, I don’t even know if we were playing it for a while but his band kept on giving us shit, they were just like, “Uh when are you gonna play that song?” because I was too afraid. I didn’t even want to try and tackle it. We didn’t play it for a long time. I was just like, “no, I don’t want to destroy it.” My idea was always like, “I’ve made my masterpiece, I don’t want to go up on stage and do like a shitty sketch of it on a nightly basis.” But eventually we started trying it in soundchecks and eventually when we did, he was into it. If I remember correctly too, it was a surprise, the first time. It was kind of one of those things, where you’re up on stage and you’re just looking down and all of the sudden it’s like, (makes crowd noise) “Yeah!” And you’re like, “Huh?” And then he’s walking over, he gets on the mic and he just starts singing that high part. I was like, “Holy shit!” And then it just kind of became a thing. And then it was like, then it was just heavy. Because of that, when he wasn’t around anymore and then when that section of the song would come up, it was pretty deep. And it was actually tough to get through that part. When he was (clears throat). Soon after he had passed away, it was like, “hoo,” that was tough.

I mean I wish I could remember more about the torture that I went through making that song (laughs). But it might be good that I don’t. But I don’t know, it still baffles me though. I still don’t know what it is and people have gone on and on about it. Jason Lee, you know the skateboarder/actor, named his kid after that song. He named his son Pilot after, apparently he was obsessed with that song. There’s been a couple other crazy stories that go along with it. But I’m just like, “yeah, I don’t know.” It is what is man, I just tapped into a moment (laughs). 

"Hewlett's Daughter"

"Hewlett's Daughter,” just short, tidy, cute little story. It’s definitely, a lot of people call it a palette cleanser when you’ve just gone through something like, “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” it’s just like, “Alright, let’s lighten this up. This is not all serious, this is not all doom and gloom, this is actually going to be a fun ride.” Hewlett was not a real person but it was actually a name I was giving my girlfriend’s dad. I liked the name Hewlett just cause of the Hewlett-Packard thing. We lived close enough to Silicon Valley to where that sort of technological mystique, there was always that shadow so kind of giving it a little twist like that. It was basically my girlfriend’s dad who I really liked. He was super cool. He gave me this job that allowed me to make all this money treating industrial waste water, which I bring up in the song. There’s a line in the song where I’m like, “and I’m treating water water water water...” It was a really weird job. I thought it was going to do it indefinitely and then eventually he quit and the company, everyone started stealing stuff like stealing cars and driving across the border and stealing checks out of the checkbooks. The whole company, it was a brand new company, started falling apart and as soon as he jumped ship, I was like, “I’m out of here.” I didn’t have to worry about disappointing him by leaving. I made my money, I was there for about two years. But it funded my first round of, my 4-track, my mics, all of my guitars and keyboards, all of the stuff that was basically the gear that allowed me to start learning how to write music and record music and just kind of hunker down in the basement and take myself to home recording school. Sometimes you end up making friends with people’s family members and then when you break up with that person, you don’t get to hang out with them anymore and you end up missing their family members more than you do them (laughs). 

Primarily for me, it was very important to get the drums on that nice, big, wide tape. And they were great sounding machines, it was an Otari. I don’t know, I ended up with an Otari because I live out in the country and apparently they’re work horses and they’re very low maintenance and they sound great as well. I was a drummer in the beginning and then it was a pretty good tool for writing songs and making demos and being able to band out the drums and stuff. The thing is that Aaron Burtch is a way steadier, really great metronome, he’s much steadier. And he’s got a good, relaxed feel. I liked to write kind of weird drum parts and sometimes like drum hooks and stuff and I think Aaron wasn’t so much into that as I was but he would learn them really well. But that one, there’s that spazzy drum fill in that song. That was something that I wouldn’t have been able to explain to him, although he does it killer every time we play it. But he’s way steadier. Usually if I knew the song could be a little bit more, “uhhhh,” kinda wavy gravy or not so tighty, then I would kind of take a crack at it. But then some of them I pretty much knew were going to be ones that he should do so we kind of split the duties. I think most of the record, he ends up playing more drums than I do, but there are some where it was just like, I would get antsy, I would have the drums set up and would just say, “screw it,” and just go for it. So it depended on the situation. 

I mixed that album myself, which still today kind of blows my mind just because mixing is such a...it’s brutal, for me, it’s a nightmare. And I’m sure the room was not conducive to mixing (laughs). There’s a place that was called Circuit City and it was one of the first, kind of pre-dated Best Buy and back then it was kind of unheard of, this “30-day no questions asked return policy,” so I’m just walking through the store, scouring whatever it is I could take home and use for 30 days. A lot of times it was stuff in the mixing process. You know, you get multiple sets of speakers and even back then, there’s no recall, it was like, “Here we go,” hit record/play, fire up the transports on the ADATs and you’re just mixing in real time. Some stupid little thing happens, bass is too hot or just like, “Oh you didn’t grab that guitar solo,” then it’s like, “stop stop stop rewind, again” And then what’s even funnier than that was, I didn’t really understand the mastering process, like I didn’t understand that you could take all the songs and the mastering guy would arrange them, I thought you had to mix everything in the order like with the gaps in between the songs (laughs). So obviously I was making it way harder on myself than it needed to be but that’s an indication of how little I knew but how much attention to detail and how fastidious I was being back then. We were really fortunate because it was sort of was this accepted genre, you know, lo-fi. I had made enough demos and I had done enough, and actually I did this whole other album that never got released that apparently was the one that was floating around at the label, “the unheard Grandaddy album.” It was actually called, “Don’t Sock The Tryer,” which plenty of Grandaddy nerds know about but it just never got a proper release. But it sounded decent, I mean it was good enough sounding. For me, that was very reassuring because that meant that the budgets would come in and the money could basically come right to me and I could just buy gear. And for me, I was super fortunate that I went that route because I was kind of learning a trade and it went on to serve me throughout all the Grandaddy albums and allowed me to speak on a certain level with other engineers and mixers and you know, learn a trade. And I still do it to this day and I’m not that terrible at it (laughs).  

"Jed the Humanoid"

I don’t know, I got mixed emotions on the whole “Jed the Humanoid” thing. Jed is like, he just won’t go away (laughs). I just thought it was a harmless, cute little story about an alcoholic robot and people really latched onto it. For me it was a way of talking about drinking too much without flat out saying, “I drink too much, I drink too much, I drink too much” it was like, blame it on the robot. Just kind of get the attention off me and put it on someone else. I’m actually a firm believer in that whole, you kind of have to watch what you write because your thoughts become real things. You can kind of create your future by just believing things or writing things. It’s almost like if you start making it, if you start thinking about it, it starts becoming a real thing. So I’ve had that come back to bite me in the ass a few times so it’s really shaped my writing now. I’m really sensitive about, I have to be really careful if I’m writing about things that come off as unhealthy or destructive cause it’ll just creep into real life. I have to think back to, a lot of old Grandaddy songs, this one in particular and a few of the other ones off this album, it’s great to get these things out of your system but it’s just like, then you sing them on a nightly basis and you’re constantly performing them and they just become a part of your being. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing, sometimes you just need to get rid of things and be done with it. So I’m not sure what my relationship is with “Jed the Humanoid.” Maybe, I don’t know, maybe he wasn’t such a good idea (laughs). I don’t know, I can’t edit myself. 20 years ago so…

I kind of grew up in an environment like that. Families were drinkers but it was always socially, it was never really like you know, “alcoholic parents used to beat me.” It wasn’t like that with any of the guys in the band either. It was just like, we grew up, I grew up amongst wild skateboarders, you know, we just skated, drank, we went to parties out in the country, we got in fights, it was insane. A lot of those guys went on to become, they joined motorcycle clubs and it was like, some people died, some people went to jail. I was really lucky that I found this creative outlet and I was able to sort of expand my horizons and see the world and become a little bit more cultured than I would have been. But I have this wild side of me. And the whole skateboarding, punk rock, road trips, I did all of that stuff before the band and then the band thing happened and that’s just one extended party and road trip too. Later on, things became more available and it was all about keeping the party going. And you get adjusted to this lifestyle and it sounds so Mötley Crüe but the tour’s over and you go home and you’re like, “now what?” There’s a lot of chemicals happening there too, you’re so amped and you’re so fired up, you’re so wound up and then you’re just expected to go home and sort of sit there and be responsible. I mean I always did enjoy, luckily I loved riding my bike, I loved going camping and these are all things that work a lot better if you don’t feel like shit. So I always had that driving me to detox, get my program together and just sort of clear my head. And that really helped me achieve an overall balance over the years but it’s been a slippery slope. There’s a lot of stuff that date back way to my youth. Entering into this line of work, it was bound to go to next level (laughs). With my personality, just with the environment and all the people you’re around on a regular basis. 

"The Crystal Lake"

The busier we were with the band and the more traveling, the more airports and venues and train stations and taxis and cities and just sound. I’m really sensitive to sound. My battery in my head wears down really quickly when I’m overexposed to stuff like that and I was always dealing with that. So it was just like, any time you could get any calm or any break from that sort of thing. “The Crystal Lake” is basically just about, once again, being thrust into all these situations. All the madness of touring and playing shows and being in cities, which I’ve never been quite fond of, and just really wishing I was somewhere else (laughs). 

We had an early sampler, that “Crystal Lake” patch was just basically holding down some of the keys on the Kimball organ. And I just sampled them and arranged them and a lot of them are off tempo-wise but they’re just janky enough to where it’s kind of charming. There’s this guy that I know, he has this studio in a farmhouse outside of Modesto and he let me store that organ at his studio and I just thought I was just giving it to him. He just contacted me recently and he was like, “Hey J, do you mind coming by and picking up that organ?” Like maybe he thought I was storing it. And that apartment that I was in, it was impossible, I had no room for it. But this house that I just moved into, there’s actually room for it, so I’m actually going to Modesto in a couple weeks and I’m going to pick up that organ. So that “Crystal Lake” organ is coming back into my house after twenty plus years. I have a perfect spot for it up against the wall. It’s really colorful too, it has all these rainbow keys. It’s that era of small compact church organs, it makes all these completely random, it’s just got tons of settings on it, it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to be like an old friend. 

"Chartsengrafs"

There’s a part of me that really romanticizes domesticity and having a steady even keeled life. But it’s taken me a while to learn that I had a lot of stuff I had to get out of my system, I had a lot of things that I had to prove to myself and I think I would have been a very very unhappy person if I wouldn’t have gone the route that I went with Grandaddy. Yeah it wouldn’t have been good if there was a lot of things that were left unrealized for me. 

“Chartsengrafs” was definitely directly about, “I got no time for girlfriends, I certainly have no time for that one in particular and I would rather be in my control room, making songs.” It’s a tradeoff that I’ve come to terms with, that it’s like, “sorry, it’s not going to work. I’m married to this other thing and I’ve sort of made that decision. I didn’t quite know, I thought for a while that I could do both but I know now that I can only do one so bye-bye.”

"Underneath the Weeping Willow"

I have depression that swarms through my family, there’s mental illness, it’s something that I’ve always dealt with myself. My kind of half assed attempts at self-medicating takes me back to that slippery slope. What I’ve learned over the years is that physical activity and being outside and being around nature really helps me achieve a balance. I just recently moved out of an apartment to a small house with a yard and it’s blowing my mind because I’ve already carved out these spots in the backyard where, “this is where a chair goes and it’s under a tree and there’s wind blowing” and it’s just like direct shot to meditative calmness. It just brings me immediate calm. 

“Underneath the Weeping Willow,” I don’t know if it’s the song specifically but that’s imagery that’s going to stay with me my whole life. I think that’s always been my place of calm. One of my favorite sounds on the planet is just like wind blowing through trees. That song is just basically aspiring to that calm state, that state of calm, that regenerative state of calm in order to deal with all the madness that inevitably comes back around again. But yeah, I’m still into it. One thing I should point out too is the little piano tinkles throughout the song was this classical music trick of emulating nature through the instrument. I was trying to make little teardrops. 

"Broken Household Appliance National Forest"

“Broken Household Appliance National Forest,” for me that was kind of a no-brainer joke. There’s a big problem with people dumping trash and garbage and appliances and TVs and stuff. The way Modesto is, I think with economics too, people just get overwhelmed, overburdened and they’re moving and they don’t know what to do with their stuff and they live right on the edge of all these orchards and kind of agricultural areas and it’s just super typical just for people to just, you know, middle of the night, drive all your stuff out to some country road and just dump it all in some field and just leave it. You see it a lot in the desert, you see it more so in the desert, something I would see all the time. Sometimes the contrast was so extreme (laughs). Seeing like this beautiful pasture or this orchard and there’s just some washer and dryer just sitting there. Something that I would see all the time and something that I couldn’t help but to comment on. I don’t know, just wonder if other people see it. Turns out they do. Turns out people like to dump shit all over the world. I always have people sending me photos like, “Hey, this reminds me of ‘Broken Household Appliance,” you know, some microwave out in some daisy patch or something. 

I probably keep all these spazz out songs for myself just because they’re so fun to play. Yeah that was me on the drums just spazzing out. It was like I got to have my own little Keith Moon moment and just kind of burn off some energy. I mean, I listened to a lot of metal. I was a huge Metallica fan, Megadeath, Mastodon, I loved listening to that stuff. I wish I could play like that, I just can’t. But I try sometimes and my fingers get tied up in knots and it’s a complete mess but (laughs) I’m going to go to my grave a frustrated lead guitarist.

"Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)"

For “Beautiful Ground,” I love the idea of tying in the Jed thing. The song is once again more about me and failed relationships. The same girl as the “Chartsengrafs” girl. It’s also funny though because I don’t think myself or anyone in the band are super, we’re not very touchy feely. We’re a little bit more closed up and kind of “mum’s the word,” kind of manly. The more songs that I started writing about relationships and kind of whining about my girl problems, I was always kind of self conscious about having to share those with the guys in the band. I mean eventually they got used to it, but it was something I had to open up, something that took me a little while to open up comfortably with. Yeah this one is kind of bridging the gap and it’s also sort of putting it more on Jed more so than myself. Where I don’t have to come across as being more “sensitive and tortured.” But yeah, another failed relationship song. 

The one night I did like this fifteen hour drive from Portland to Modesto and I was just exhausted and I didn’t really have a place to stay so I just slept in the park. After I drank a bottle of Boone’s Farm so I could go to sleep. So that part is just kind of reflecting on, you know, I’ve always been slightly jealous of people who are, it just seems like certain people are more well adjusted. And it’s fascinating to me and I’m a little jealous because I feel like I got a few screws loose but I’m not giving up on that dream. I have this domestic thing that’s appealing to me and fascinating to me. That was definitely like, that song was sort of like, was me seeing people who were doing it right. And I’m still, here I am sleeping out in the fricking park and just on this path that I was on, which at that point was Grandaddy. Not wanting to be this weirdo tragic musician but just somehow kind of ending up there anyways on occasion. I never really glamorized being the whole tragic artist thing but despite my trying, it would always kind of slip back into that on occasion. 

Beck has always been one of my favorite people as far as he can really sing about sad pathetic things and make them sound funny. And that’s basically me commenting on that. I wish a lot of the sad pathetic things that I wrote about could come across a bit more lighthearted but somehow they end up sounding a little sadder than his versions. 

"E. Knievel Interlude (The Perils of Keeping It Real)"

Oh yeah, the Evil Knievel...I feel like this theory has kind of gotten me into trouble but I feel like when you keep it real and you’re able to write about it, it really comes across. I think it’s kind of the opposite of “phoning it in.” Or if your writing is too trend based, you’re just kind of following what other people are doing or following other people’s stories and it’s just like yeah basically the perils of keeping it real. And I always felt like Evil Knievel was the prime example of that, you know, breaking every bone is his body and the guy was a complete nut case and he was just living life on the edge but he was an American icon (laughs), people loved him despite all of his glaring flaws. I think what a personal nightmare he was (laughs) as a human, he was pretty controversial but a lot of kids my age grew up really idolizing him just with all of his exploits. I just feel like it has been my duty to a degree to kind of keep it real and I do feel like the music is going to benefit from that. Or the integrity is going to benefit from that. All you have to do though is to keep yourself alive and all you have to do is kind of rein it in every now and then just enough to get some results. But definitely I think that’s why that got tagged onto the end of “Beautiful Ground.” 

"Miner at the Dial-a-View"

The sci-fi thing is still interesting to me because I wouldn’t classify myself as a big sci-fi buff, you know, I can’t cite all these authors or filmmakers or whatever. But it’s an easy place for me to go to for some reason, again based on that imagery that I was saying of just being a bit lost and floating and kind of looking down and seeing all these people who seem to have it figured out and wondering you can’t quite figure it out yourself. But I’ve also mentioned over the years that it’s really important for me in my songwriting to attempt to avoid cliches or overuse themes and anytime I can kind of tap into something that was like, “oh I haven’t heard too many people come at it from this approach or use this sort of imagery.” If you can find something that you think is yours, something that you think you discover on your own and you’re making it work and you’re giving it personality and life then that’s a pretty cool accomplishment. I think that space at that point was an easy place for me to go to. There’s a song on the album called "Miner at the Dial-a-View,” which is like, epitomizes that. Yeah that was just this whole scenario that I imagined. It could have been like a dream of a movie idea that I had but it’s basically knowing that at some point, our planet is going to be deplete from all these precious metals and elements and whatever so they’re sending miners to other planets and so it becomes this common job, just taking off from Earth. So then I started imagining, “OK they have these little colonies, they have stores, they have bars, they have brothels or whatever,” probably not too different than watching a gold mining movie or any kind of movie about miners I suppose but on another planet and in the future. So I imagine this miner, he’s in this bar, there’s maybe these countertop GPS video machines and I was like, “OK you get to put in coins like you would a video poker machine but you dial up the coordinates of any place on Earth. Your house, any place that you want to have a look at, you know, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, but in this case, the guy’s house and he’s looking at the house and he can see things in real time and he can see that there’s this dude coming over and hanging out with his wife (laughs).” So anyways that creates this scenario but what I didn’t know was I kind of accidentally invented Google Earth (laughs). Well it’s basically kind of the same thing as Google Earth but except you don’t put coins in it and it doesn’t sit on top of a bar on a mining colony. 

The female operator vocals in “Miner at the Dial-a-View” were done by Tim Dryden’s wife. Her name is Rikke. I still remember having her come over and record the parts individually. I just thought she had such an interesting voice, she’s Danish and she’d actually only lived in America a few years by that point. Not that she hadn’t been speaking English in Denmark but I was like, “her voice is a lot more interesting sounding than a lot of annoying sort of valley girl types that I knew in downtown Modesto so (laughs) she won, she won the contract. I don’t know if it was the verses or the choruses but something I’d been lugging around for years and years. So I was really, I knew that the chorus had the ability to kind of soar. I think I had bigger dreams for it soaring more. Part of it still sounds a bit disjointed to me or just kind of fragmented. That’s fine. I think it was just because I had such high hopes for it. It’s not that I don’t like it, not that I haven’t grown to appreciate its charms but whatever. I love the fact that, I spent a lot of time on the delays, the “dream dream dreams.” They’re completely, so many hours of just trying to get them in tempo. There’s a lot of rewinding happening during those sections. And yeah more than anything I just wanted the chorus to fly. It’s a lot of things to a lot of people. Like some people don’t give a crap about it and some people think it’s like one of their favorite Grandaddy songs so I just gotta step away at some point. 

"So You'll Aim Toward the Sky"

The strings on "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky" are pretty, pretty gritty (laughs). Like 12 bit sawmill (laughs) but they’re cool man, they work. But they definitely have a sound, they have a very kind of automatic yet organic, grainy but still kind of woodsy sound. But yeah they worked for that song. Was it the Emulator? The E-mu? It was really cool looking, it was something definitely out of like a Star Trek episode but it’s really kind of stark and gray and it used floppy disks. And there was like some old electronic musician in Modesto and I found out he had this insane catalog of all these old floppy disks. That was like a gold mine. Yeah the machine would basically play whatever samples were on the floppy disk so that was cool. I’ve had so many different string generating machines over the years and you never quite know what you’re gonna get. The trick is to be OK with the fact that they’re not real strings. Once you’re not trying to trick people into thinking that you’re using real strings, then the sky’s the limit. 

That’s the one that I should probably get with a therapist on is that recurring theme of always longing for this home out there. But yeah that was definitely, it’s all about that in "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky,” just getting back home. I know that my thoughts were not gonna end this album with a bang. We’re gonna go out with this sweet and sad, but still hopeful, open ended kind of sentiment. There was at some point, this period of time where the album was coming to an end and I was pretty relieved because I’ve just worn myself out. And I got to that point that a lot of people get when they’re making albums where you don’t know what you have. You’re just like steeped in self doubt and there’s this whole sophomore album thing which played into the title, you know, the sort of joke take on “the sophomore slump” thing. Tweaking that and ending up with “The Sophtware Slump.” So it was all this kind of, I think I was hell bent on this idea of diffusing the pressure. “How can I diffuse the pressure? Because I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself, I have no idea what I’ve made here.” It’s super frightening to be so close to something like that and all of the sudden be thrust into the situation where everyone gets to listen to it and everyone gets to kind of make all these offhand comments before swiping, you know, mentally swiping through or I guess back then just hitting fast forward, fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. So I didn’t want to just hand this album over that I’d been slaving over and that I was really close to and I was really insecure about. So in order to kind of take the steam out of that whole idea a little bit or just relieve the pressure, the guys came over to the house one night and we just got wasted and we’re just having fun and we started making up all these joke songs and I was hitting record and just stupid lyrics and just nonsense, like total Beavis and Butt-Head, South Park style stuff back then. And then I started thinking about it, I was like, “Well actually if we do a couple songs about robots and maybe like something kind of, there would be two bait songs. We’re gonna bait them in the beginning and actually make them think that this is like, “Well Grandaddy, they’re kind of known for nature and technology,” so actually make the two songs kind of allude to that. Basically we assembled it, it’s this insane collection of ten or so songs and we put it on a CD-R, sent it to the label, FedEx overnight, said, “Here’s the new album, can’t wait to work with you.” No information, not going to answer the phone for a week, that was the plan, which we failed at, eventually it just (laughs), it got too heated. Apparently some people almost got fired and it was just like, it started getting really serious. But we just wanted this image of everyone in the boardroom on these badass speakers at the label and then putting on this CD and it just being this total shitshow. And them just being, “Oh God, what have we done, what have we got ourselves into?” And apparently it went down like that. We succeeded. But in my mind, you couldn’t lose. By doing it like that, they’re gonna be so relieved that that’s not the record so whatever they end up getting for real as the record is just going to be like, it’s gonna be way better than that. So I was just like, “At least they’re gonna be relieved and they’re gonna like it because it isn’t what they just got done hearing.” 

I would almost venture to say that I probably practiced that 8-10 times until I got the right “thank you.” Like I really sound like I appreciate it. Like it’s not, (makes heroic voice) “thank you” or (makes robot voice) “thank you”. I think I got the right inflection on it. It was just kind of weary, kind of tired but very appreciative. 

Summing up the album, what my relationship is. I can’t say it’s my favorite. I don’t actually have an album that’s a favorite. As a songwriter, as a person who likes to produce music, I’m usually trying to just hit moments. So I have to go through each album. There’s definitely some moments that I hit on this album so that’s usually what I’m hearing. And the way that I am too, I’m like, “Alright that’s done, let’s get to work, let’s learn how to play these songs and let’s go out and enter into this new chapter.” I don’t think I really had much time to sit around to pat myself on the back about anything. It was just really cool that other people’s take, in all these different forms so far reaching kind of started to take shape. And it just became what it became. I could have never predicted any of it. So I’m all for being positively surprised and that’s definitely what happened with The Sophtware Slump. 

Outro: 
Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Grandaddy. You’ll also find a link to stream or purchase The Sophtware Slump. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

All tracks written and produced by Jason Lytle

All tracks published by Genghis Music/Deadlineless Music

Admin in the USA by BMG Songs, Inc. (ASCAP)

© 2000 V2 Records, Inc.

Still the rockers are: Burtch, Dryden, Fairchild, Garcia and Lytle.

The Sophtware Slump was recorded at Little Portugal in Modesto by Lytle with occasional on/off assistance by Fairchild.

The Color Of Spring Reverb And Other Shades Were Applied And Mixed at Robocrops in Modesto by Lytle.

Final Gloss And Glue by Greg Calbi.

"He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot"

"Hewlett's Daughter”

"Jed the Humanoid"

"The Crystal Lake"

"Chartsengrafs"

"Underneath the Weeping Willow"

"Broken Household Appliance National Forest"

"Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)"

"E. Knievel Interlude (The Perils of Keeping It Real)"

"Miner at the Dial-a-View"

11."So You'll Aim Toward the Sky"

Episode Credits:

Theme Music:

“Winter Cold” by North Home

℗ Meladdy Music (ASCAP)

Intro/Outro Music:

“What Do You Think About Me?” by Charlie Don’t Shake

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam