The Jordan Perry Interview
Born in Charlottesville, VA, Perry was influenced by the likes of Johnny and June Carter and church music. But its inevitable that the guitar would find Perry as he is a true virtuoso of the instrument and an extension of melodic prose that embodies the likes of Fahey, Basho and Glenn Jones. In this interview we explore Perry’s childhood growing up in Virginia, the element of water playing a huge role in his youth, the relevance of church music in his family, picking up the guitar, releasing records on label Feeding Tube Records as well as his most recent album “What Do You See Everyday?” and much more.
When and where were you born? What was your childhood like?
I was born in Charlottesville, VA in November 1983 in the old Martha Jefferson Hospital. The building is a financial advisor, or something, but I’ve heard it’s still haunted. My partner and I pass by it whenever we eat at our favorite taco place in Charlottesville. La Michoacana, should anyone be paying a visit anytime soon. My dad is a retired minister, my mom is a retired nurse and social worker. Growing up we moved around a lot, but only in Virginia. I went to elementary school in Louisa, Richmond, and Exmore on the Chesapeake Bay near the tip of the Delmarva peninsula aka the Eastern Shore. Some of my most potent memories and recurring dreams come from this time. Everything is flat and I remember it feeling really eerie when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time wandering around Willis Wharf and the shells of buildings that used to be the center of the thriving oyster and crabbing industry there. It doesn’t feel eerie anymore. The flatness is more of an even keel experience. When I was 11 we moved to Salem which is approaching the mountains of Southwest Virginia where both my mom and dad’s families have roots. Salem is a much bigger town, but not too big. We always happened to live walking distance from woods and water of one kind or another. Water especially occupied a lot of my time and imagination as a kid.
When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was music something that was relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings?
I think I was always enchanted by music and the idea of doing it was generally more exciting than listening. I can probably trace the real bite of the bug to finding my uncle’s old Kimberly (Sears brand I think?) guitar in my grandmother’s attic in Blacksburg, VA. I begged her to call him and ask if I could borrow it. Thankfully, he did. My grandmother was from Grayson County, Virginia in the mountains and loved the Carter Family and Johnny Cash, especially his gospel albums. Church music, especially choral music was a big thing in my house growing up. My dad, in addition to being a minister, was a choral musician and singer. I used to get, and still get, chills from the feeling of sitting in a group of voices. They don’t even have to be singing. As a teenager, I moved away from the church spiritually and I never really returned, but the sonic gathering I associate with church hymn sings, choir practice, and singing with my siblings at home still means a lot to me. I have three sisters who are quite a lot older than me so I was a bit like an only child from about the age of 7, or 8, but with these three wonderful women who were almost like second moms who I’d go stay with from time to time. While we were all very tight, they always felt to me like they were part of three distinct and beautiful worlds. One is a therapist and poet, another is a drama/choir teacher and amazing singer, the oldest is a nurse and a farmer. They were all already inhabiting these various zones when I was young and they all felt like home to me.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your life pursuing music?
When we were really young there was a lot of running around the woods and fishing and watching the same movies over and over. When I was around 11, or 12 music (with the occasional attempt at a new hobby like skateboarding) really took over for me and my closest friends. We started bands and some of us still play together. Much of the music I was into as a young kid was relegated to classic rock/country radio and tapes I got from my sisters (Violent Femmes, REM). At some point, around age 11, the canon of Seattle bands appeared on my radar. It was then a pretty typical story of finding out about punk through learning about Nirvana and Mudhoney and what they were into. I think the first big concert I saw was Bush with the Goo Goo Dolls and No Doubt (!!!!). Around a year later was when I attended my first basement punk show sponsored by Food Not Bombs in Roanoke, VA. It’s hard to name one specific influence at that time, but my introduction to that scene, its ethos and politics, was a life changer. I remember my dad dropping me off at a church, funnily enough, where there was this show. I was greeted as a weird little 12, or 13 year old by this very pleasant person in cutoff cargo pants and a CRASS (I think it was CRASS, or something in the style of CRASS) t-shirt. I remember he had a rubbermaid crate of zines, or something and was super smiley and welcoming. I don’t remember much more specifically about that night, but I remember feeling welcomed and watched over. It was probably around that time that I really knew I wanted to live in/with music all the time.
Prior to becoming a solo artist you participated in the band New Boss. Can you tell me about this outfit? What initially led to the decision to first set out on your own? 2018 saw the self released debut album “Witness Tree”. Tell me about writing and recording this album and what the overall vision for this project was.
I actually still play guitar and sing with New Boss. They’ve been around since about 2013 and I joined in 2014 after returning to the U.S. from living in Ramallah, Palestine in the Occupied West Bank for 2 years. That time was another deeply formative stretch to say the least, both musically and educationally. I took a hiatus from New Boss for a year or so when I was working on my first self-titled guitar album. Thomas, the guitar player and primary brains behind the project, and Parker, the drummer, are both folks I’ve known since I was about 15, or 16. I used to go see their band Order of The Dying Orchid and lose my damn mind at houses around Harrisonburg, Virginia such as the still extant Crayola House and others. Nick Rubin plays keys, Scott Ritchie plays bass, and Devon Sproule co-sings with me. Devon has been a major inspiration since we met in the New Boss context. She’s an incredible singer and songmaker and has taught me a lot about putting the pieces together in a composition. I’ve always played in bands and don’t see that stopping (I think it gets back to the attachment to the group sounding ritual of singing I mentioned earlier), but I’ve also always done a lot on my own.
In some ways, playing in bands and playing solo exist in a kind of loving tension which I’m not sure I could function without. I’d been writing solo guitar pieces for a number of years before S/T and Witness Tree, but it took a long time to coalesce around a language that I wanted to document and share. Witness Tree was my second album. The idea originally sprung when I was participating as a musical collaborator in a site-specific dance festival/residency, which took place in Wellfleet, Mass. The festival was called Fleet Moves and was co-created by my partner Katie Schetlick. I first learned about the concept of witness trees when on a walk with artist Rebecca Burril. Katie and I were walking with her near her home outside of Wellfleet when she explained that witness trees are of trees of quite some age that were present during some historical trauma. This concept stayed with me for a few years and re-emerged as the name of a piece I wrote on August 13th, 2017 - the day after the fascist, white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville. I was reflecting on the role of my body in the crowd that day - somewhat unmoving, witnessing. It wasn’t clear to me, and still isn’t, what the role of simply bearing witness is. That day, it didn’t feel like enough. In some way that whole record is born out of that whole time and is a meager attempt at expressing some of that tension.
That same year you released your self titled follow up on Feeding Tube Records. How did you want to approach this record that differs from your previous work? Would you mind giving some background to songs such as “Casting”, “Sunday”, “Crime Times” and “Whydah Flats”? 2020 and 2022 saw the releases of “CAWIWTU” and “QuarnTunes No. 23”. How did the pandemic impact you not only as an artist, but a person?
S/T was actually the first record. I have my dear friend Kass Richards (who makes beautiful music under her name and also plays in the band U.S. Girls) to thank for that. Kass and I have played music together for over 15 years. She has a small label called Good Cry Records and took on the original 100 copy run of S/T. She’s in the Boston area which is part of why Feeding Tube got wind of the record and offered to reissue it. It had no cover art on the first run, but contained prints of photos by my friend Molly Landergan. When Feeding Tube picked it up, we made a cover in collaboration with Molly for the reissue. Anyway, “Sunday” is the oldest. I think I wrote that in about 2010, or so. I was finishing my bachelor’s degree in classical guitar from Temple University in Philadelphia. I was into the work of Hans Werner Henze and Augustin Barrios at the time, both of which I think informed some of the gestures and ideas in that piece. “Casting” is actually part of a small suite/triptych which kind of emerged as my personal soundtrack to a section of the Tarkovsky film Andrei Rublev.
Casting refers to the ‘casting’ of a bell which is a main feature and metaphor in one of the film’s chapters which is almost a parable about the act of making things. The whole trio was originally called the Bell Suite because it all comes from that portion of the film. “Crime Times” is a piece I wrote while living in Ramallah where I was teaching for a Palestinian music school called Al Kamandjati. Technically it’s a study for the right hand. I’m not sure the piece had any particular intention beyond that at the time. But later when thinking of a title and reflecting on the time and place it was written, Palestine which was and still is suffering, but existing, under a brutal settler-colonial, military occupation,Crime Times felt appropriate. “Whydah Flats” is basically a nostalgic meditation on an evening spent hanging around Mayo Beach in Wellfleet. The tide pools at sundown are mesmerizing and evoke Peter Scarbo Frawley’s (a local Wellfleet poet) image of Seashine. Whydah is the name of a shipwreck in the area. I honestly can’t say I’ve come to terms with either of those impacts. I’m sure I’ve been affected along the same continuum as everyone else. I’m generally very slow to process and learn and I think the impact of that time on my art and personality is still something I’m trying to understand.
Tell me about these two releases and the relationship with Feeding Tube as they release your anticipated 2023 follow up “What Do You See Everybody” that's set for release in mid June.
I should include that 2020 Records and Tapes, out of Baltimore, released two albums of mine on cassette between Changing Always Who Is Waving To Us and Quarantunes 23 being released on FTR. One is called Beautiful Swimmers and was recorded at my friend Ned Oldham’s house in Chincoteague, Virginia on the Eastern Shore. Ned and I also have a regular project. The other one, Curtains, is a set of fretless guitar improvisations. The image on the cover is from the set of a dance piece that my partner and I were collaborating on and never got made because of Covid. The timing and circumstances of all four of those recordings has directly to do with the pandemic and in some way might speak to the earlier question. But, also, 2020 is co-releasing “What Do You See Everyday?” with Feeding Tube. So in one way, all four of those releases have converged in the new record. Also, if I actually analyze the timeline, WDYSE was composed over the course of about 4 years from 2018 to 2022 and for me is kindof a musical memoir of that time. CAWIWTU, Quarantunes. 23, Curtains, and Beautiful Swimmers, are all fully improvised records with the exception of two pieces on the Quarantunes set. One is called Romulea from S/T and the other was an early version of Redact which is the final piece on WDYSE. I think where Witness Tree was a settling into a certain compositional vocabulary, those other records are me getting comfortable with an improvisational language.
Tell me about writing and recording this album and what you ultimately wanted to achieve and express with this material.
The title What Do You See Everyday was something that my niece Sus said at a family dinner one night when she was about 3. For some reason the question just smacked me. I feel like I’ve been examining the various ways one could interpret that question ever since. To me it means everything from the beautifully banal, to the terrible shit we see on a daily basis in our world which becomes more and more internalized and embodied. The other thing about the record is that I was trying to trust in a variety of impulses and interests that were outside the lexicon established on those previous records. I feel like they are all individual spaces and I wanted to make something which traversed different rooms in the same house.
What else have you got going on this summer but in music as well as outside of it? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
It’s going to be a pretty busy summer! I play in a few bands besides New Boss that have some stuff going on. New Boss is working on a new record. Night Teacher, the project of singer-songwriter Lilly Bechtel, has some shows coming up. Ned Oldham and I are working on a new set of his songs for a record. I’m playing in a new quartet with Mike Gangloff, Isak Howell, and Kaily Schenker which has a few shows. I also play in an early Bill Monroe repertoire focused bluegrass trio called Uncle Pen and we’ll be doing some stuff around VA over the summer, maybe recording. I’m also going to be involved musically in a performance piece by a local choreographer, Shandoah Goldman. So, yeah! Busy times and I’m grateful for it. In addition to all that, I work at a super fun place in Charlottesville called the Music Resource Center which is home to practice rooms and studios that 6th-12th graders can come use and explore. We’ll be running some cool camps over the summer and I’ll be busy with that most weeks. I hope to announce some live stuff soon for WDYSE and folks can follow my IG. (@gorgonparis) to learn about those.
Thanks for reading and listening!
https://feedingtuberecords.com/releases/what-do-you-see-everyday/
