So 16hp took a break, Jean-Yves needed time with his horse farm and you know, people needed time off. I don't have another way to make a living, besides to play music - I mean, I guess I could, I could go get a job at McDonalds or something... But I can't afford to take a year off, so I just started writing songs and I was just planning to play them where I live, in Colorado, to be able to make some money and you know, to play just by myself.

So I started recording these songs and it just kinda took on its own life and turned into... I started playing all these different instruments and it turned into something bigger than I had anticipated. But I'm enjoying myself - just to have had the freedom to do whatever, you know, I didn't have to...


To consult with anyone...
Yeah, which is okay, it doesn't bother me, but it's just a different experience. I was responsible for everything, so...


And most people wouldn't say that these songs are much different from 16hp songs.
No, they're not at all, I mean, the way I write them is the same. I didn't have any different direction that I was going, it's just the songs that came to me at that time and you know, if 16hp were recording at that time, they would have been 16hp songs.


Yeah I was just about to ask what determines where a given song will go - okay, back then, 16hp took a year off, but right now, both the band and Woven Hand are active, so how do you decide whether a song is a 16hp or a WH song?
It's just who I'm with at the time - I don't really decide... I kinda decide at the moment. Like if I'm playing with Woven Hand and if I have a new song then it'll be for WH, if I have a new song and I get together with 16hp, I'll use it for 16hp. I don't try to say, "Okay, this one's better for this, this one's better for that."


Do you write at home, or on the road as well?
Mostly at home. I don't write very well on the road at all. Once in a while I do, but... I write lyrics maybe on the road a little bit, but not music so much... Music, it's usually when I'm at home...


Is that the order of things - lyrics first?
There is no order, it's back and forth, sometimes it's the lyrics, sometimes it's music. I mean, at home I try to be a little bit more disciplined about it...


You have a regime?
Not really... I mean, a little bit, sort of. You know, at least once a day to sit down at the piano...


Which is funny, cause I think that's the one instrument that you actually don't play on the WH records...
I play some piano, I play piano and organ, but I like to start writing from there and... I like to write music on one instrument and then end up playing it on a different instrument, because I find it more interesting, so I'll write a piano part and end up playing it on the banjo. And it's just easy to do it on the piano... I do it you know, when my kids are running around - it's not like I have a quiet time where I sit and write...


So you don't have an office - like Nick Cave now writes his songs in an office, you don't have that.
Right, yeah. [laughs]
I don't have an office, no. You know, in-between picking up the kids and going to school or making food, or washing dishes or whatever, then I take two minutes here, three minutes there, sit down real quick and try something...


How old are your kids now?
My daughter's just turned 16... and my son is 6.
16, that's tough.
Yeah... a teenager. A real pretty teenager...


That should help you if you needed themes for songs... But back to WH - last year you've been asked to adapt some songs and also write new ones for 'Blush', a dance production by Wim Vandekeybus' Ultima Vez company. How did you approach this work, considering that in the case of a dance performance, the lyrics might not be as important?
Well, the whole dance world is something that I don't know anything about, really, and it's not something that I'm involved in - and so it was something kinda out of nowhere. They had already started working on some of the songs from the WH record I think even before we had decided to work together and so when it was all decided that I was going to do it, then they said "We want to use this song" because it had... a song like 'Your Russia' or something like that, they liked the feeling of that for a certain part of the dance...


By the way, I've always wondered what do the two songs - My Russia and Your Russia - have to do with Russia? Cause the lyrics don't help there...
It's nothing really direct, it's just... for some reason that's just what I wanted to call it...


Have you ever been to Russia?
No I haven't... My wife's parents come from Odessa... so that's a big part of her life... So I'm just kinda fascinated by it and it's nothing direct, you know - I don't know where I got this name, I just like the name.


How did you have to adapt your music? Was there an already existing choreography when you started working?
Well they wanted to use these certain songs. They needed them to be longer, to be more instrumental, without the words... So I adjusted those songs that they already decided to use, according to what they wanted. And then I wrote the rest of it - I would write music and then send it to them and they would work the dance around the music and then they would send me a video of them dancing and I would work on the music so we kinda worked back and forth this way. Which was good, they gave me a lot of freedom, they said, you know, just make your music, you don't have to worry about this and that, just make the music and we will adapt to it.


And now that you're touring together in a way, how do you feel about taking part in the performance?
It's really a great experience. For one, it makes us better musicians, just because we have to pay attention to things that we wouldn't normally have to pay attention to - what other people are doing, and they rely on what we do - and we're not used to that, we're used to just playing, and the song can just fall apart, and it's okay - which it normally does [laughs] - but with the dance company, you know, if the song falls apart, then the whole show falls apart. So it's much more stress - but in a good way, it just hopefully makes us better musicians. It's fun to be not the center of attention, fun to be off to the side, in the back...


But are you not the center of attention when you come up on stage? Which does happen during the performance?
Yeah, at the very beginning I walk around and play banjo. Each one of us has a little thing that we do within the dance, which is nice; they tried to integrate us more into the performance.


After this experience do you have any acting aspirations? Some time ago you were about to play in a movie called Finespun, and also write the music for it - what happened to that project?
You know, it's just a matter of funding... the woman who is making this movie has to get funding for it, and I haven't spoken to her for... maybe two years or something but my wife just told me the other day that she called and said "I'm still planning on making that movie..." and so we'll see.


Are you interested in writing music for films?
Oh, yeah. There's plans to do one in 2005 - I mean, it's not a sure thing at all, it's just in the work right now. Wim Vandekeybus is making a movie, a feature film and he wants me to do the music and possibly do some acting in the movie as well... but we'll see what happens. But yeah, if it's something that I'm interested in, then yeah - we've had opportunities to have our music in movies before and turned it down because it wasn't the kind of movie that we wanted to be a part of...


Was it maybe because people have certain stereotypes of you and they'd say "Make some dark music for us"?
Yeah, usually it is, it's based on that usually.


What about any other plans for the near future?
Well we just plan to write. After the tour in October-November - we decide after that which direction we want to go, cause we have so many ideas...


> And Pascal and Jean-Yves are also doing their "solo" project now - well it's no longer solo really... Lilium.
Well it's Pascal's project really, for the most part.


And it's also not much different from 16hp - like on the first Lilium record for example, there's a motif in one of the songs that reappears on Flutter on the Folklore album - so it seems you are using these ideas on different projects quite freely. And if you want to work on them in a way that you don't want others to disturb it then you just call it a solo record.
I guess so...


The songs you write, the beliefs you express in your music, are harder and harder to get to the audience as people seem to be getting more and more cynical. Artists like you, or your songs, are often labeled pretentious, idealistic...
Fundamentalist or... extremist...


Yeah. So how do you cope with that?
There's no... Yeah, there's no way of really coping with it other than the fact that I just know that that's just the way it is. The way I believe is that that's just the way it is, that truth is absolute and whether or not you want to believe in it or not and however you respond to it or not is beside the point.

You know, the world doesn't want to... Everybody - the whole thing of "I'm not gonna judge you, what you do you it's fine for you and what I do is fine for me" - because no one wants to be held accountable for their own actions and they just say "there are no absolutes - you say this is wrong but I don't, I say this is fine and all my friends agree with me, so leave me alone" basically. To me it's like people being deceived and my job is to somehow make them see or think or have a care or have a worry or have a fear - of their own wretchedness, you know what I mean?

No one wants to think that they're bad. No one wants to think that what they do is not good. So no one wants to judge anyone else, which is... that's a good attitude, not to be judgmental, but at the same time what's good is good and what's bad is bad and I think it's pretty obvious but we just try to avoid the question - we avoid it with things, popular culture and things that we come up with to occupy our time, our minds and just to get us off the subject. And we think we're more intelligent than we used to be as well, we think we've progressed in our intelligence and the way that we should treat people.

Basically it's just - everyone just wants to be comfortable and so, you know, avoid conflict at all costs and to be left alone and to do what you want to do, but it doesn't work that way cause man is selfish, man is greedy, man is just wicked, so it never works, you know, there's never peace - no matter what solution you come up with, it's never gonna work cause man is who he is. There's always someone who's gonna screw it up. Always. And no matter how intelligent we are or how far we've progressed or how many machines we've got to make our lives simpler or easier. We make it so we have no contact with each other even though people are all around you outside on the street but still there's no contact, we're secluded.


So do you work to change that or just to portray it?
Portray it. I mean, I can't change anything...


You can change individuals maybe...
I think I can just give them... hopefully an opportunity to think about something they wouldn't normally think about... I think only God can change a person's heart or mind and I just try to get them think about it, you know? Cause when people think about the church, they think about the church - and the big building and whatever, so... I just try to let people know.


A common reaction or retort to those views is "It's so boring to be good all the time" or "If everyone were good everything would be so dull" or "Heaven must be so boring."
Well that's just... an ignorant way of looking at it, because we don't know what it's like to be good. We don't know what it's like. And we don't know what Heaven is like, we have no idea. Our nature is; to get, for ourselves. That's our nature.

I mean, when you have a child, that's what they do: "This is mine" - you know what I mean? You don't have to teach a child to be selfish, they're selfish (clicks) like right there. And you have to teach them "You know you have to share this, this is not just for you." There are different reasons why people learn this - because they want to get along with society, maybe that's the reason, or maybe that they really care about other people, and that's the reason for not wanting to be selfish, everyone has different reasons for what they do. And usually even the good things that people come out of selfish reasons - to look good, or feel good about themselves, because they've done good things, people will look at them and say oh what a good person they are...

But about the thing that to be good all the time is boring... We don't understand, we don't understand it and that's why we think it's boring. It's so foreign to us, it just seems from the outside that it would be boring. And the way that man has in the church itself made it look, on his own account, because he wants to look good, you know - religion in itself wants to look good. To feel good about themselves, like they've done something good - when in reality it's only Christ that's done anything good.

It's not what we do that makes us good or bad, it's just the way we are and we have to be delivered from it and it's outside of us, this help. So us thinking that a good life is boring, that being good all the time is boring, that's just selfishness basically. Because you know, when you're bored it's like "I want something. I wanna be entertained, I want something, I want something, I want something." But when you're actually giving things to people and if you're involved in the life of Christ, that's not boring at all, because He gives you what you need, because He knows what people need, He knows that people need laughter and joy and all these things, and He brings all these things. But we try to attain it on our own, we say "Oh that's boring, I wanna do it this way, it's quicker and more entertaining and it's more colorful" or whatever the situation may be, it's just all about what we want and how we want it, that's how we act.


And in a way the church gives you a bad name, or anyone who might talk about such things...
Of course, that's the whole goal of evil, hum? Because I believe in God, I believe in the Devil as well and if you think about what would be the Devil's goal, what would be his priority in order to further itself - and that would be to disrupt the church itself and to have the view of the church be what it is. Which is... everybody is like, "Nah, all these people are hypocrites" - all the stuff that goes on in the Catholic church, and the crusades and all that man's been a part of in the name of the church and so the people are like "Oh, the church is no good" - and so the Devil got its way in the sense that man has made it his religion rather than God's.

And when man gets a hold of something, he just wrecks it. So the church is... the first place the Devil wants to discount, to make it seem like this is not the way to go. So it's no surprise to me that this is the way the world views the church.

But you know, the Bible says that the church is the people, the body of Christ is in me and you and it's not a building, it's not a formula, it's a living, breathing, moving thing. And it has nothing to do with big buildings, with statues everywhere; it has nothing to do with it. These are all symbols - symbols can be fine, but we take it to the extreme where we're worshipping the symbols...


Well and it's also comfortable...
It makes you feel spiritual - it makes people feel spiritual when they walk into a cathedral and they see all this beauty and you know, the Mother Mary and this and that and it makes them feel like "Oh this is church, this is what God is all about". But it's a feeling, it's more than the real thing, a lot of times God is... you don't even feel God, but He's there anyway. But we try to make it feel like it's there; we try to put Him in a place that we can come to...


Isn't it the same with prayer? And yet people say "If God knows what you're thinking anyway, why pray?"
Because that's how it works and that's what the Bible says to do. And that's how we learn and that's how we become closer to God. It's a show of faith as well, that we do pray. We don't understand the mind of God, you know, when God says "I know what you're thinking even before you speak it" - It's like... Like I know my wife loves me, but when she tells me she loves me, it means all the more, you know? It's a communication. I know she loves me; she doesn't have to say she does. But she does, because she wants to, because she has that desire to let me know - it's a similar sort of situation.