Music

Q&A with Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo

'We could put on John Fahey — no, let's go with Electr-O-pura tonight.'

Georgia Hubley, James McNew and Ira Kaplan
Michael Lavine

Revered Jersey indie rock band Yo La Tengo is turning 30 this year, but in a way it only feels like 21. That’s because it wasn’t until 1993’s Painful that the lineup we know and love — Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew — was solidified. McNew was the late addition, a bassist and sometimes-singer brought in as a utility player who found a permanent spot in the lineup. The Matador label has recently re-released that classic record as Extra Painful with bonus tracks. “Anyone who ever said they liked our older records more than Painful, I just told them they’re wrong,” Kaplan has said. Well, now there’s more to like. I talked to Kaplan over the phone last week, in advance of the band’s miniature 30th-birthday victory lap, which brings them to the Trocadero on Saturday.

City Paper: Tell me about the Painful days.

Ira Kaplan: Some of the work we were doing — the more we felt it was paying off, the more we were motivated to work hard. Because a lot of it was not particularly fun. It really did involve people being challenged by the others to do things that weren’t necessarily what came naturally, and try to push to find other ways of playing and expressing themselves. So: A lot of induced angst, that was part of it. But we kept liking the results so we were willing to put up with that.

CP: Is music hard work?

IK: Well luckily I don’t have that much to compare it to. I have a feeling it’s not. It can feel like it is, but I think if I was doing something else I would discover what hard work really is.

CP: But does it come easily?

IK: It comes very easily, but what to do with it may not come as easily. On any day we can go to our practice room and play for hours and have a great time doing that. What we want to share with other people, what we might want to play again, or what we might want to try to recreate the setting with which we created that, you know, the thing we just made off the top of our heads, those are all decisions … I don’t even think of the words ‘easy’ and ‘difficult,’ really it’s just, like, a process.

CP: Is it fun?

IK: Oh yeah. I cannot imagine doing this if it weren’t fun.

CP: But 30 years of travel, possible financial uncertainty… I guess there are a lot of downsides

IK: I like that we’re working. I enjoy working and some of the things that you described, they kind of fall under the category of work. Playing music is not really work. Some of the other aspects are work — and I like that part of it, too, so I don’t really look at it even that way, like it’s a downside. There’s things you like more than other things. Luckily, I can find something slightly rewarding about waiting out an airplane delay. It’s like getting the job done, which feels good in its own way.

CP: And you’ve been going pretty much non-stop.

IK: Pretty much. It depends what you mean.

CP: Well, no extended hiatuses between records or tours. Do you think fans could start to take you for granted?

IK: I think there’s some element to that. I think there’s some truth to that. … I’ll be at a show in some city that’s not ours and say, ‘ah, yeah I saw you guys last year.’ Well no, we haven’t actually been to this city in five years. You know, when you’ve been around as long as we have the time becomes more elastic. It’s kind of remarkable to me that Painful is, what is it, 21 years old. It really does not feel that old to me, so I understand why other people — if I have trouble with our life spans, I don’t see why others shouldn’t. That’s definitely something we deal with.

CP: Do you feel older than you did when you made Painful?

IK: I’m thinking. Yeah, in some ways. You know, in some ways not at all, but in other ways definitely.

CP: Physically?

IK: I’m not so sure about the physical difference. Probably there’s a physical difference but because that’s been happening gradually… I have a pretty a good idea of how I felt yesterday. How I felt in 1993, I don’t have really, uh, I can’t summon that one up. … In some ways being older is better. I think the perspective that age has provided is nothing but positive. And I think the three of us work together and get along in a way that’s much more productive than it was because of what we’ve been through together and being able to draw on that and build on that.

CP: So James McNew comes into the band back then. And he’s really only signed on for a couple tours, but then it works out that he can stick around. How did you know you’d get along with this guy?

IK: Well, we didn’t. When James joined, not only did we not know if he’d be around forever, we knew he wouldn’t be. I mean, he joined as somebody who was in a different band, so we knew he was coming to do a tour, a couple tours, and then that was probably going to be that.

Looking back, I can’t even imagine how we would have found a permanent band member any other way. I mean it just seems like after all those years to sort of anoint somebody would’ve — I don’t know how that could’ve worked. The fact that it happened before anyone knew it, without anyone knowing it, just seems perfect.

Really what happened is that we were enjoying being together, we were enjoying playing together, and it just started making more sense. It became like an organic thing, rather than ‘well we sifted through the applicants and uh we’re gonna go with you, and here’s the health plan.’

CP: Sometimes I hear band with a very distinct and unique worldview and I think: ‘How did these people find each other?’

IK: Yeah, there’s a great amount of good fortune that went into this.

CP: Have you really not listened to Painful since the early days?

IK: I have now. I can’t imagine when the last time I would have heard it from start to finish. … Maybe we were doing an in-store to promote the record and it was being played on the P.A. or something. But no, even there we listened to it for work.

One of the things we were doing as we were debating which of our demos to include in the [Extra Painful] package, we wanted to know how different they were form the final versions, to it kind of made sense to be reminded what the record sounded like. And you get so used to the way you play the songs live that that it kind of replaces the sound of the record in your brain. So we listened to it for that reason.

CP: I don’t know why it surprises me that you haven’t listened to your own music — because why would you?

IK: We’ll listen to a song if we’ve forgotten the arrangement or forgotten some lyrics and have decided we want to go back to something. And it can be very pleasurable, like, ‘oh yeah, I’d forgotten that.’ It’s not torture to listen to our music, it’s just something that I can’t imagine we’re sitting down to dinner like ‘well, you know, we could put on John Fahey — no, let’s go with Electr-O-pura tonight.'

CP: When you did go back and listen, to put together Extra Painful, were there things you noticed you’d like to have done differently?

IK: We were listening to the demos and there were things that I thought we hadn’t done as well, certain mood things we didn’t improve. But just observationally, not like, who was it, Frank Zappa who went in and like re-recorded all the tracks? It’s like ugh that’s done. We’ll work on the next record. So it wasn’t wrenching in that regard.

CP: Were there parts where you listened and were like, ‘yeah, we nailed it’?

IK: Definitely. … I can’t imagine we’re listening to it completely objectively — we’re listening to it as the people who did it all those years ago, with a strong impression of what we’re gonna hear. I think we all take pride in that record. And I was not surprised to find things, lots of things, that I thought ‘yeah, that worked.’

Yo La Tengo plays Sat., Dec. 6, 8 p.m., $22.50-$24, with Antietam, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., thetroc.com.