100 Musicians Answer the Same 10 Questions

Part Fifty-Six: Bruce McKenzie of Maquiladora

instigated by dave heaton

Bruce McKenzie is one of three singers/songwriters for the California band Maquiladora, along with Phil Beaumont and Eric Nielsen. Maquiladora's visceral music captures the ghostly feeling of deserts, or other otherworldly locales, through a unique sort of haunted country/folk/experimental music filled with atmosphere. Their most recent recordings were the EP The Gulf (Acuarela) and the album A House All on Fire (Darla). The group started as an informal recording project among the three over a decade ago, back in 1995. In his own words, McKenzie describes what he's played with the band: "In Maquiladora I have played guitar, accordion, lap steel, violin, mandolin, pump organ, piano, chromonica, hammond organ, glockenspiel, vibraphone, bass, and sung." For more information on the band, visit their website.

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What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?

The unparalleled access to finding and listening to it, the range of options in the making of it, and the potential for self-sufficiency.

What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?

The vanity. Mine. Others'.

What are you up to right now, music-wise? (Current or upcoming recordings, tours, extravaganzas, experiments, top-secret projects, etc).

Maquiladora toured Japan in August, playing with Acid Mothers Temple gurus Makoto Kawabata and Hiroshi Higashi. We'll re-release our second and third albums in Spain, followed by a tour there. A side project called Buzz or Howl, currently a heavy pysch-drone-improv thing with me and Eric, just released our second (Auto-erotic Asphyxiation/Disappointment) and maybe in September our third (Smoking Peace With a Burning Crow) records on our own Lotushouse imprint. We've just recorded material we're very happy with for the next album, maybe a double. Some of my solo recordings will also finally be released on the Lotushouse label under the name Peckinpah. Deep listening pieces of harmonium and lap steel/slide mainly, interspersed with Stephen Foster-ish lullabys.

What's the most unusual place you've ever played a show or made a recording? How did the qualities of that place affect the show/recording?

In Paris Maquiladora played on a leaky boat on the Seine in a rainstorm. We were worried.

In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?

You know, I used to think it affected it a lot, but now... everything's different with the internet anyway. Access to product or shows when I came of record buying age ('73) was pretty limited. Right now it's completely without borders. Place matters less and less. Radio - if anyone listens anymore - is non-regional clear-channel kind of mass programming for the most part. College radio has nothing to do with locale, with students bringing record collections and tastes from around the country that have been researched and bought on the internet and that's great. But I think the question is really less about geography and more simply about what did or do you have access to? What can you hear where you are? Do you try to hear the place where you are? Whatever. People go where they wanna be, if they can, so it becomes a symbiotic relationship - people also make/affect the place they live. You write about what you love, and if that's where you live, then there it is. But at the end of the day it sure isn't more important than the drugs you took this morning, or the death in the family last week, the money in your bank account or the pick-up that's gonna plow into you on the freeway a few days from now.

When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?

Well, you know, all the time things are brewing. Finished up something coupla weeks ago that had been hanging around for a few months. I tend to think of songs as houses, and I like to use some different rooms in them: rooms you don't go into much, so you only see/hear that room one time, and then there's, you know, the kitchen or the bedroom where you go a lot (verse chorus) and then the rooms you pass through to get to these places, so I guess I just found another room and a hallway for this particular house. It's also good to pull down some walls, to the outside or between rooms. There are bands whose music and words I like but are frustrating cos you spend the whole song in the same goddamn room. Don't get me wrong, there is perfection in the ten foot square hut and I love me some repetition. I'd rather have one chord than four, two than three, cos you box yourself into a thing, and reveal the limitations of that thing. But why make triangles and squares out of habit when you could be making who the fuck knows what kind of beautiful things.

As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people...and why do you think that is?

I'll never stop being interested in other people's music. I used to have -- and need to have again -- listening parties with one or two friends, no more, where we get together, eat, get a little drunk and play each other records and sit around and listen to them, jump around, cry, whatever, and then talk about them. Even if we all knew them very well. And I like to and try to make music that stands up to that kind of attention. Like always, there's a lot of filler being played these days, but even if it isn't we usually treat it like it is. That's a shame. (I never listen to my own music, unless someone else has put it on or asks me to.) I've always considered myself a better fan than a musician anyway. These days, I find myself less patient with music, maybe. this isn't a high art/low art thing and this isn't related to being a musician, but to getting older... I've got no time for average stuff. I mean, I got some time, but not a lot. I've got my own average music to make.

Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)

There's no answer, really. Yesterday I listened to Carla Bozulich, Tammy Wynette, the Bee Gees and Blackfoot. Day before that George Harrison, Morton Feldman, Bert Jansch, these songs recorded in Istanbul before 1922 (that's all I can make out from the cover) and the Minutemen. Today so far talk radio, Sam Rivers and Messaien's 3 petits liturgies.

Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?

Irma Thomas, ruler of my heart. Mainly the Alan Toussaint produced sides. Soul music in general. People should put away the Blondie and the Queen and the Cocteau Twins for awhile and let go of all the ironic 80's/70's camp pop shit and listen to some singers lay it out. Eddie Floyd, Carla/Rufus/Irma Thomas, James Carr, for fuck's sake, The Staple Singers, Betty Wright, Bettye Swan. So many. That skeleton faced mother fucker whose name I forget, Delfonics, Impressions. Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. Where to stop? So many. "Oh the humanity!"

What's the saddest song you've ever heard?

I was in Cambodia coupla years ago, and in Phnom Penh near the banks of the Tonle Sap river my girl and I were walking to meet new friends for dinner. There's this band shell lit up, and a crowd of families, gangsters, vendors, lovers, prostitutes, couple hundred folks, all watching what seems to be a karaoke concert. We stop, watch, listen. The singer stops. And stands there. Someone comes to lead him back to his seat and lead another up to the microphone. We listen to a few. This one young man begins to sing a complex Cambodian/Thai pop soul ballad that sounds like Stax soul records with a different tonal root system. Amazing, keening melody. Truly stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks gut-wringing beauty. And as I listen and then watch at the end of the song, (which has wrecked me completely) I realize, these people are blind. That's why they stand waiting after the songs. They can't get get to the mic alone and when they're done, they can't walk away. And so, it's the saddest song I've ever heard in what ended up being the most beautiful and complicatedly life-affirming setting. And I don't mean this in a touchy feely simplistic way. I mean this in a hard real way cos all the fuckers there -- crowd and singers -- lead difficult lives. I don't want to romanticise it, I just deeply appreciate it. I'm thankful I was there to hear it one time cos I'll never hear it again. But just thinking about it raises the hair on the back of my neck. As for songs I know the titles of:

"What'll I Do" by Irving Berlin
"Has He Got a Friend for Me" by Richard Thompson

I've taken this and myself far too seriously, and I apologise. But you know, I care about music so....

To check out the rest of the Q&As, click here.