Damon Weasler

By Roger Kuhns
November 16,2001

Neighborhood sounds. Children. A motorcycle driving by, someone trying to find a radio station, a church bell, melodic guitar and soft voice…this is how Damon Weasler’s new album entitled Hamilton Place begins. Living now in Door County Wisconsin, he is a soft spoken, kind-hearted and highly intelligent musician, writer, painter and traveler of the globe. Weasler has returned home to the area after peregrinations far and wide to settle for a time in Egg Harbor along the shores of Green Bay with his partner Heather Popp.

Weasler has performed several times at The Bridge coffee & bookshop in Egg Harbor, and at Kravings in Fish Creek among other places. I recently met with Damon at The Bridge where he will return during December and January for more performances.

Roger: “Welcome back to Door County. What has brought you home?”
Damon: “Heather and I decided that we wanted to be closer to our families for the next year and sort of balance out both of us having been in big cities. So now we can have space to breath, collect our thoughts and be our true selves again.”

Roger: “And you’ve returned with an album, this is very exciting, tell me about it.”

Damon: “The album to me is so fulfilling. I think of it as a record/diary of my time in California. It summarizes my experiences there, very personal for me. I went in to the project with hesitation and not a lot of self-confidence that I’d feel the way I do now about the finished product.”

Album Note: Weasler has crafted a fine progressive pop album with creative, insightful arrangements that wrap beautifully around well-composed lyrics. Do not expect brain rattling screaming guitar licks or predictable hooks, rather sit back and put the headphones on for a layered journey through melodic acoustic guitar and percussion arrangements deftly augmented by keyboards, pedal steel guitar, horns, and subtle but important sound effects. This album will grow on you.

Roger: “I really like the album, it has a really good sound. Go back some, let’s visit your musical beginnings.”

Damon: “Well since my dad was a music teacher (in Shawano). I started out early in music because of that. When I was three years old my brother and I got started on Suzuki violin and at five I was playing my first coronet. Then six years of piano lessons, then in grade school I took more coronet lessons. I always had this strong urge to be a guitar player, so I started taking some guitar lessons, then some bass, then back to the guitar. I started to actually play the guitar after that, and ever since then its been going.”

Roger: “Did you play in a band?”

Damon: “Yes. I started a band with my brother, so we were always playing and recording. In college I was a music major, playing trumpet, but I was always more interested in the guitar and started writing music at that time. My one big band was called ‘Jimy Square Foot’. That was in college and we kept it going after that and moved out to California.”

Roger: “The band was together for a while, did you ever make an album?”

Damon: “ ‘In Jimy Square Foot’ we were together from about 1993-1997, I remember us being described as folk-rock, acoustic based folk-rock band. We were somewhat distinctive because we had a flute/trombone player in the band. We were compared to Jethro Tull a lot. As far as the recording, well, we were always recording but we never produced a true album. We did a lot of demo recordings.”

Roger: “And here you are finally with an album, a solo album no less. How does that feel?”

Damon: “It’s great. It was the first time I was doing something by myself musically. First time I wasn’t working with my brother musically. I had a lot of self-doubt, but I was very fortunate to work with producer Steve Savage (in San Francisco). He was such a wonderful guide and great collaborator. He really helped me create a continuity of sensibility through out the whole project. The album is not just a collection of songs.”

Roger: “What kind of continuity have you achieved here?”

Damon: “It might be hard to try to define this continuity, but it speaks of Americana, of simple neighborhood life, that’s the feel that I wanted to give to my audience. It all comes back to my life in this house in California (Hamilton Place) and all the changes I went through from never having been to California before to ultimately leaving and traveling to 35 different countries. I also got a Masters during that time, and experienced all those feelings of leaving family and breaking away from my brother; leaving childhood.”

Roger: “This is in essence a journey album isn’t it?”

Damon: “A real journey, absolutely. I think you could map the tracks of the album as a journey and then it book ends itself. It’s the city and the country and everything in between from Song For England and to the alpine glow of pink in a winter forest in the song ‘Pink Fire’ – to capture those moments.”

NOTE: Many of Weasler’s songs are layered with sound effects to augment the lyrical picture being painted on the musical canvass. For example, the neighborhood and childhood sounds on the opening track ‘Brother’, and the war sounds on ‘Song For England’. There is the sound of a door slamming (‘Cabin of E Reprise’), or street noise; these sounds are very effective, not overdone but rather complimentary.

Roger: “Who are your musical influences?”

Damon: “My musical influence is more than anything else the Beatles. Also, some Beach Boys and Three Dog Night. I consider myself a real son of the 80’s. My vision of pop music was very much fueled by Duran Duran, and that was my initial vision of the lifestyle, success and fame. As I got a little bit older I was very much drawn to Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Grateful Dead to some extent. I think that’s all evident in my music. I was also really influenced by soloists like Donovan, the acoustic storytellers, like Cat Stevens.”

Roger: “Your music seems to have risen above typical pop; I hear strands of Duncan Sheik and Elliot Smith in there, and hints of Nick Drake. Very melodic stuff.”

Damon: “Yes. The music is melody oriented, driven. It’s very personal and emotionally charged. I like to juxtapose a percussive rhythm with a story telling melody. And also I like ambiguity in the music, I like to craft the songs so that when they’re finished there is an ambiguity so that what you feel is how you hear. I don’t like to think of the music and the lyrics as being separate, but rather that they compliment each other and tell a story.”

Roger: “How do you write your songs?”

Damon: “There’s two ways, really. One is when I get a small idea and play that and then I start putting together these small ideas over time and they become a phrase or a progression and I eventually put lyrics to it. That can go for months or longer. Then there’s the other way, where the song seems to be already written in side me; the lyrics are already there and it comes through me like I’m a medium. I write it all down in ten minutes, it is all done in ten minutes. I can barely move the pen fast enough to get it all out; very spontaneous, very automatic song writing.”

Roger: “That’s really great when that happens, that spontaneity.”

Damon: “Oh yeah. The thing is if you’re in one of those spontaneous modes you can’t stop, you have to continue. If you stop you’ll never finish, you’ll not get back into it for that song. If I write one verse and stop I never get the other verses down.”

Roger: “On your album Hamilton Place, which you’ve told me is the name of the house you lived in while in California, can you tell us which of these two writing methods were used on some of the songs, any examples?”

Damon: “It’s like this, I write a song the way I paint. It’s almost like carving wood, think of it as a subtractive process. What I work from is how I want you to feel when I sing the song to you. I think of how the work of art (in my paintings) or song will make you the listener feel when I’m finished – like capturing that amazing pink sky in the woods in the song ‘Pink Fire’ – that’s the desired effect for the listener. ‘Pink Fire’ was one of the spontaneous songs, and ‘Cody Carson’ is also like that. I had just seen the mountains for the first time during my first trip out west. I had an idea to create a folk personality like Rocky Raccoon in the Beatles’ song, and also I had this ideal of myself, sort of this climber who is intrigued and hypnotized by the mountains, and he eventually falls to his death. I had an image of this person and the song was written.

“My song ‘Cabin’ is one song that was always around, but the song took a new form for the album. It was partially solidified by help from Steve Savage my producer in San Francisco. He made suggestions on which parts should be repeated to make it sound better. So even though the song was written many years ago, this album version is new.”

Roger: “You’re really a melodic story teller.”

Damon: “Oh, yeah. Thanks. It’s nice to hear that. ‘Cody Carson’ and ‘Goodbye Virginity’ are excellent story songs. ‘Brother’ is about me saying goodbye to my brother, and I’m sorry and thank you and I forgive you.”

Roger: “It sounds like it all came together, and that you had some good support to see the project through.”

Damon: “Yes. Heather was with me the whole way, she listened to every song, every step of the way. Only Heather and Steve (my produce) were there all the time.”

Roger: “You mentioned you traveled a lot, where did you go?”

Damon: “I’ve traveled extensively through Eastern and Western Europe and Asia, as well as the United States. I’ve gone to 35 countries since 1997. On my website (www.lonesometraveler.com); it’s an on-line gallery of my journal selections, poetry, drawings and paintings and photos. These are of my travels and life and all that.”

Roger: “What motivated you to take these trips?”

Damon: “On the one hand it was fear of regret, or fear of my reluctance to leave. It was also I think me attempting to become the adult that I had envisioned myself to be. I think I had always envisioned myself to be a traveler and adventurer. Lonesome Traveler is sort of built on the idea that the traveler in me is pushing the borders of consciousness. That’s the working thesis.”

Roger: “What have you learned from the road?”

Damon: “Well, you could say what I’ve learned about myself and the world. It all boils down to one anecdote that’s always been there: what you put into it is what you get out of it. I think that’s the secret to life. You don’t get any guarantees. You could travel to the other side of the world and feel just as crappy as you do here, you may not feel a thing. It’s all an internal thing; there are no guarantees from the external. It’s not just a matter of moving your body.”

Roger: “How have your travels and realizations affected your music?”

Damon: “I think that it could be said that it does affect my music in that it encourages an acknowledgement and encourages me and the listener to be more aware of the passing moment. Your perspective is simplified. And because of that I guess some of the more pure and universal messages can be conveyed through music and are most powerful in their simplicity. When you’re more focused you see how it all fits in. You’re able to exist more in the moment. But more importantly than all this gibberish, it has made me a good listener and good observer of life. My job is to translate what I’m seeing and feeling and hearing.”

Roger: “So how is this conveyed into your songs?”

Damon: “I think my music became much more intellectual. They lyrical phrases and the musical phrases have become more refined and intellectual. And my going to school added to that. All that is inside of me now, from Plato to the Modern, as I expand into the world is a kind of vision coming through my work.”

Roger: “Would you say you have a cause, something that you most often try to convey to your listeners? It seems to me that your album is like a musical book.”

Damon: “What I’ve always though of my music is that life is too short to do the same thing twice. I think that you have a lot of different styles on the tracks; its not the same all the way through. Its not like I’m trying to make each song different, but more like they each have their own life. There’s a lot of personality in the album. Each song is different but they work together as a piece of art.”

Roger: “You’re also an accomplished painter; are there parallels between this and your music?”

Damon: “Hmmm. That’s tough to discuss. I guess it’s difficult because so much of painting is the process. The only thing that’s ever talked about or considered is the end. Actually the experience of doing a painting that takes months is very personal. No one is there with you at 11:00 at night when you’re no longer wondering if you’re going to be happy with this painting because you just realized you love it. It is a great threshold to reach, and that is what painting is to me; that process. The build up to the moment when you realize you love your work. The rest is just sort of coasting. When it’s finished and dry and hanging on the wall that’s when people want to talk about it, not the transformation to that point.”

Roger: “So the parallel, then, is the personal process?”

Damon: “Yes.”

Roger: Tell me about your album artwork.”

Damon: “I think that the album cover – me in the living room of Hamilton Place standing my underwear looking out onto the street – is making myself unpretentious…naked, to let people into my personal world. As far as the rest of the artwork, the cabin on the inside sleeve was built by my grandfather in 1918. It was built about twelve miles outside of Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula and I dedicated the album to my grandfather. The house images are of Hamilton Place, where I lived in California. Heather took the picture of me in the field. I worked a long time on the layout so that it works – spectral light through the door, and so on.”

Roger: “Do you have any formal music and art training?”

Damon: “I have a BFA from Milwaukee UW in drawing and painting. I could never decide if I wanted to be a musician, a visual artist or a writer. So I would go in to each one for a period and then go into the next, go out, then go into the next for a period of time. I’ve been doing the music thing almost exclusively for the last year but now feel a strong desire to start painting again. I have a lot of energy inside me that has to be painted out.

Roger: “What’s in the future?”

Damon: “I’m going to devote myself to promoting my album and in balance will enjoy the Door Peninsula. We’re going to be here this winter, and want to promote in Wisconsin by playing and hope to go national. I am also applying to various graduate schools so I can pursue a PhD in American Studies – a new pursuit. My first hope is NYU to study there. Heather and I want to spend some time on the East Coast.”

Roger: “It is great to have you here, even if only for a few years. We look forward to your Door County performances.”

Discography: Damon Weasler’s album ‘Hamilton Place’ is available on the www.musictoears.com website catalog.

Also visit Damon’s Lonesome Traveler website at www.lonesometraveler.com .