OWEN ASHWORTH OF CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE

Hi, Owen and thanks for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology.

Your phenomenal album Etiquette has just been re-released and features two previously omitted tracks. Was it in part that because these tracks never made the original cut that prompted you to reissue the record?

I decided to reissue Etiquette because the vinyl has been out of print for a few years, & I finally had the opportunity to reissue the record on my own little bedroom label, Orindal Records. Tomlab Records, who originally released the record back in 2006, is based in Germany, so the album was only available in the US as an import. The new Orindal edition is the first to be pressed in the United States, where I live.

The two bonus tracks, “White Corolla” & “White on White,” were written & recorded shortly after Etiquette’s initial release. I always felt like they belonged on the album, but just missed the deadline.

The brutally frank and honest lyrics that feature throughout the record are not strictly personal or autobiographical but such lyrics often paint the portraits of everyday people and incidents. In crafting these candid lines were you simply reflecting what had overtime came into your field of vision or creating a musical safe haven for those who may have found these lyrics, moments and events a very real instance in their life?

I tend to write about a combination of actual & imagined situations, but the stories are very much rooted in real life. I’ll pull little details from all over the place & try to fit them together in a way that feels cohesive & natural. I write to help myself understand my fears & anxieties, & to try to make sense out of the confusion of life. I don’t write happy songs, but I think there is a lot of comfort to be taken from relating to a painful or difficult experience. I’m a strong believer in the power of commiseration.

At the time of writing and recording Etiquette, what was happening during your life that was encapsulated by the record?

It was so long ago, it’s hard to remember everything. I was touring a lot & living a very transient lifestyle, sleeping on my parents’ futon, a friend’s couch, sometimes in my car, sometimes subletting rooms in different cities up & down the west coast for a few weeks or months at a time. I didn’t have any real job, other than music & occasional temp work. I was writing music all of the time. I bought a small, second-hand sequencer/drum machine called a KORG EM-1, & I started using it as a sort of external hard drive for my own memory, recording tiny bits of music whenever & wherever I could. Over time, I accumulated the melodies & patterns that became the Etiquette album. I recorded some demos with the EM-1, a harmonica mic & a cassette 4-track, & brought some of those demos to Seattle, where I built up arrangements & recorded new parts with my friend Jherek Bischoff, who is a talented string player, arranger & engineer. Other demos I brought to San Francisco, where my friend Jason Quever had his home studio. Jason is a good friend from my college days, & I used to play in his band Papercuts from time to time. Jason taught me more about music than anyone else I know. Jason & Jherek are a huge part of why Etiquette sounds the way it does. I think you can hear all three of our personalities in those recordings.

Twelve years on from its original release, in what ways do you feel exactly the same about Etiquette, the subject matter explored, the conceptual stylings, musical delivery, and in what ways do you feel different about these notions with the benefit of hindsight and as an ever evolving artist?

I remember the day Jherek & I finished mixing, & how proud I felt. I was so excited to play the album for my friends. I don’t feel that way about my new music. I’m much more shy about sharing my recordings now than I was back then. I don’t want to bother my friends with my music any more than I already have! I’m still very fond of Etiquette, & I have an easier time listening that album than I have with any of the other Casiotone albums. In part, I think it’s because so many of my friends were involved with recording those songs. It’s a wonderful kind of nostalgia to listen to those recordings now.

I’m also taken by how much my voice has changed over the years. I moved to Chicago not long after I finished Etiquette, & in that time, my California accent has faded, & I speak & sing with more of a Midwestern accent. Recording with Jherek & Jason, I got to sing into some really nice, expensive microphones, as opposed to my old harmonica mic that I’d used for all of the demos (although we ended up keeping the original harmonica mic vocal track on “Nashville Parthenon”), & I was shocked by how much detail came through on the recordings. I didn’t really know how to sing into a nice microphone. I had no mic technique. That’s why you can hear all of that breathing between lines on songs like “New Year’s Kiss.” Jherek wanted to edit out the breaths, but I said no, leave them in. I guess I wanted people to hear that I didn’t know what I was doing!

Something else I’ve been thinking about: As I’ve gotten older, the characters in my songs have gotten older, too. I wrote most of the songs on Etiquette when I was in my mid-twenties, which is an age when people really lean on music. I think that has a lot to do with why some people have such a strong attachment to these songs. They were identifying with the characters & situations during the time when pop music meant the most to them. People at that age are able to make room in their emotional lives for pop songs in a way that just doesn’t happen again as they get older. So, now, when I write songs about people my same age, fewer people going to be as receptive. Most people in their mid-twenties just aren’t as interested in the concerns of an older person, & most older people just don’t have same the space in their lives for pop music that they did when they were younger. The stars were aligned for Etiquette in a way that just won’t happen again for me. That’s fine, that’s just how it is. I’m really grateful to have made a record that so many people heard at the right point in their lives.

In what ways did you want to differentiate Etiquette from your previous releases Answering Machine Music, Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars & Twinkle Echo and further to that, in what ways did Etiquette change the course of your future work?

By the time I was ready to record Etiquette, I felt very confident about the songs I’d chosen to record. The previous albums were recorded piecemeal; I’d write & record a song or two in a single evening, & the save the tapes until I had enough recorded songs for an album. A lot more revising & editing went into the songs on Etiquette. I’d spent a lot of time with those songs. I knew they were good, & I knew how I wanted them to fit together. If anything, my song writing process has only gotten slower since then. It sometimes takes me years to finish a song. A lot of my early songs just sound like rough drafts to me now, but there’s something very exciting about that. It’s just not how I like to work these days. Etiquette felt like the turning point. That record taught me how to work hard at song writing.

Etiquette was such an understated and highly regarded album that it’s merit exponentially grew as a source of inspiration for so many artists. Since that time, what personal experiences have you had where people have directly referenced your work as a defining inspiration for their own musical creations?

Younger people in bands have occasionally told me that Etiquette was an important & inspiring record for them, & it feels really special to get to hear that from them. It’s an incredible experience to hear new music that was in some way informed by something I made, because in that music, I can hear the music that inspired me. To be part of a continuum like that, it’s humbling & gratifying.

The hallmarks of Etiquette were not just in your deft touch of instrumentation but your selection of vocalists to accompany tracks such as Katy Davidson on Holly Hobby and Sam Mickens on Happy Mother’s Day. Was the true craftsmanship of these tracks only realised with the addition of these vocalists or something that you had in mind all along for the tunes?

After the first few Casiotone albums, I noticed that strangers & friends alike were assuming that I was writing autobiographically, & they’d occasionally ask me about the characters in the songs like they were real people. It was kind of shocking at first, & it made me feel very self-conscious about what kinds of details I was including in my lyrics. For Etiquette, I wanted to use other voices almost as actors, to emphasize the fictional nature of the lyrics. Sam Mickens wrote his own lyrics for Happy Mother’s Day, though. I just wrote the flute arrangement & the title, & let Sam do whatever he wanted with the vocal. I love Sam.

The rerelease was remastered by Matthew Barnhart. What did Matthew bring to the table in your eyes really accentuated the original and added any extra level of finesse to an already fine album?

The original master of Etiquette was made by Joseph Suchy, a German mastering engineer chosen by Tomlab. He’s a very talented guy, but our only communication was via email, & there was a language barrier. I don’t speak German, so we had to rely on his limited English to communicate musical ideas that I had a limited understanding of in the first place. Also, we were working under a strict deadline, so I ended up having to approve the master while on tour, using just a rental car CD player as my reference. Twelve years later on, with better understanding of & vocabulary for mastering, I was eager to make some changes.

Matthew Barnhart has mastered a number of releases for my label, Orindal. Having the rare experience of getting to hear the unmastered versions of lots of different records by different artists, & then hearing what Matt did with them really left me in awe of his skill as an engineer. When it comes to mastering, I trust Matt’s ears more than anyone else’s. He knows my music, & he’s also just very easy to communicate with. We were able to take our time with the new master, & I’m very pleased with the end results.

Artists don’t often listen back to their work beyond its initial release but in revisiting Etiquette what tracks personally stand out to you as you’re most favourite or timeless pieces?

I don’t think I’m the best one to ask about whether any of the songs are timeless. Certainly not Don’t They Have Payphones Wherever You Were Last Night, though. Nobody knows what a payphone is anymore! Personally, I really like Nashville Parthenon. It still thrills me when Stan Tangeman’s pedal steel first comes in. & I love the songs that Jenny sings. It’s been years since Jenny & I have lived in the same city, but she’s still a very close friend of mine. I have such fond memories of recording those songs with her. We had a lot fun, & I still think she sounds great.