Momzine, from the e-pages of Miles of Music

Article by Bliss

James Intveld is one of those artists people tend to scratch their heads over -- not because they can't figure him out, but because they can't figure out the powers that be who have elevated stuffed-jean wannabes who can't sing, play or write over a guy who's played guitar with the Blasters, drummed for bluesman Lester Butler, writes beautiful melodies and great hooks, and sings in a classically beautiful croon. Oh, and he acts, too. He's even currently directing a short film.

The native Los Angeleno played mostly rockabilly in the 1980s, in the then-vibrant Southern California club scene that was also hosting The Blasters, X, Los Lobos, Dwight Yoakam, Lonesome Strangers, Lucinda Williams, Jim Lauderdale and Rosie Flores (who recorded his song "Crying Over You" on her debut album in 1987). By Intveld's own account, his songwriting took a more thoughtful turn in the mid-'80s, altering his musical direction. Bear Family released his first, eponymously titled album in 1996. The next year, he joined Kathy Robertson and a host of West Coast country artists on To Roy Nichols With Love, on which he sang a Tommy Collins tune he learned from a home demo by Merle Haggard. This year, he contributed to Robertson's follow-up tribute to Nichols, Hillbilly Down, and also released a new solo album. Somewhere Down the Road is on his own label, Mollenaart (Intveld, or "windmill keeper," in Dutch, the nationality of his ancestors).

Listening to the version of "Somewhere Down the Road" that he contributed to the second Town South of Bakersfield compilation back in the mid-'80s, it sounds anxious -- like Intveld's still waiting for life to happen to him. His updated rendition is more hopeful, reflecting the ways he says he's been adjusting his life.


MOMZINE: You've performed in a variety of settings, from fronting rockabilly and swing bands to playing solo with your mandolin. Do you ever feel like a chameleon?

James Intveld: Well, as long as it's kind of in the same format that I'm about, it's not that difficult. It's basically taking whatever I do and stripping it down, y'know what I mean? It's all kind of in that vein of roots music. ... I played solo in Pasadena in the '80s for about three years. Then I'd go out to Yucca Valley and I'd play three nights out there. And basically that's all I did, was go out and play solo acoustic. So for me to do gigs with Gillian Welch and people like that, or Kim Richey, it's something that I've spent a lot of time doing, even though people don't know it. A lot of people hear about me and they think, "Oh, rockabilly guy." That's part of what I do.

MOMZINE: You kind of synthesized all your different influences on the new album.

JI: I think what happens to me as time goes by is, I pick up different things from whatever my environment gives me, and I think that the music and the songs are dictated by some of that. I mean, growing up, I listened to all kinds of music. And I think in the '80s when I was playing rockabilly, I was really trying to stay pure to that music and that scene -- I was really into that. And I think that that kind of overwhelmed my musical journey at that time with just pretty much that style. And then I think about '85 I started writing all these other songs I thought, "Wow, I'm writing all this stuff and I don't know necessarily where it's coming from." I think a lot of people who heard 'em were going, "Oh my God, what is he doing now, is he like a songwriter guy or something?" It was really rough times in the mid-'80s; there wasn't much going on and I started playing solo acoustic, just because for some reason I didn't have a band. Then it was like, "It's is almost easier this way, because I can just go out and play, do anything I want, and I don't have to think about the band." That was probably when my songwriting started to change, because I had a chance to kind of open up more avenues than what I was doing before that, which was pretty much the traditional rockabilly thing. And I love that music, and I love country music, and I love blues, and over the years I've been involved in all these different things, and because of that, it's given me different flavors for the stuff that I do.

MOMZINE: You also grew up in a very musical family; how much did that personal heritage affect your direction?

JI: I grew up in a family where there were always records playing in the house. My mom and dad are both real big dancers and love to dance. My dad was a singer and so he was always singing, and he had bands when I was a kid, and they'd be practicing at the house. So we're really fortunate. I grew up listening to all kinds of music. My parents were into '40s and '50s stuff, and American Bandstand was on, and we would watch that every week. My parents were so into music. My dad came home one day and he's like, "Ah, I got this really great record -- I was at the store and it had such a good beat," and he had the Robin Trower album. I just went, "This is nuts."

MOMZINE: I can't imagine my dad ever bringing home a Robin Trower album.

JI: My dad didn't know it was a Robin Trower album; he just liked the way it sounded. And my dad was really into Creedence and stuff like that, in the late '60s and early '70s. My parents just love music, and they were into whatever was going on that they could get into. And I think just growing up around all that music was really, really good for us because we absorbed a lot of it at a young age. We didn't know any different, like someone I ran into didn't even have a record player in their house, and I just thought that that was weird. But then they grew up watching sports, and I didn't.

MOMZINE: There's a problem with that?

JI: No, I don't think so, but it's so funny that we'd go to my friend's house and his dad and them would be watching the game, and you'd go to my house and my dad would be up singing, dancing with my mom, and we would all be singing and playing records.

MOMZINE: These days, how do you stay true to the roots of your music when mainstream culture bombards us with everything but those sounds?

JI: The thing about me is I'm a working musician, and I pretty much play every day. So I don't spend that much time listening to music because that's kind of what I do. It's funny, because a lot of my friends are musicians -- most of the musicians I know don't even own a good stereo. They don't spend that much time buying records or listening to the stereo, because after they come home, y'know, they've just been playing music all day or practicing or whatever. And it's kind of the same for me. I'm not really all that into knowing who's doing what or what's really going on, except for people like Steve Earle or something that I hear and I like, y'know. But a lot of the stuff that I hear nowadays, I don't necessarily completely relate to. Lyrically, maybe, on some of it, but musically, not all that much. So I don't spend that much time dissecting other music to get my influences. It's kind of like whatever I get from either playing onstage with other players, or through gigs that I do, or from some of the music that I hear that other people turn me on to. But I don't really have that many outside sources.

MOMZINE: What do you think of the people who categorize roots music as "retro"?

JI: That would be like saying somebody who plays classical music at the Philharmonic is living in the past. But they don't usually say that. I think alternative music is past now; so what's really necessarily new? [It's] just a matter of opinion. Anybody that's into rap knows the difference between all the artists. Me, I can't tell one from another because that's not what I'm into. Unless you're really into it, you don't recognize it so much. It's a generality that we all came up with for everything. So if people want to make a generality about me and my music, I can understand how easy that is for people to do. So, they wanna call it retro, they can. I'm not living in the '40s or '50s -- I'm living in the year 2000 right now. I'm just not really into electronic sounds or synthesized stuff -- that stuff doesn't feel right to me. I'd rather listen to real instruments.

MOMZINE: Do you still think of yourself as a club musician? Or do you think of yourself as a songwriter foremost?

JI: I would say that I think of myself as a club musician because I work so much. Even though I am a songwriter -- that's just part of it. But I don't sit around all day and write songs for everybody and hand 'em out. I don't sit around and say, "I'm gonna write a song for so-and-so and I'm gonna try to sell it to them." I'm like the guy who plays music, and I write songs because I like it. It's a lot more fun for me sometimes to do stuff that I've written.

MOMZINE: Has acting affected you as a songwriter, in terms of getting into the minds of characters?

JI: Y'know, it doesn't come from the minds of characters, but it does come from opening yourself up, and I learned a lot of that [studying] Meisner Technique. What that did was really help my songwriting -- I can do free-association, let my mind just go, and I can write those ideas down and go through them later. It's easier for me to write songs that way, and the acting stuff does help me so much. Because it isn't acting from the outside, it's acting from the inside, and it's really kind of [where] songwriting comes from. It doesn't always come from there, but I think that it's a really darn good place to have it come from. So the acting stuff really, really opens me up and really, really helps me say a lot of things that I probably wouldn't be able to say.

MOMZINE: Do you have any musical mentors? People you turn to?

JI: I think of Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings and people like that as really kind of my heroes. I think when I was younger I was into flashier people, y'know what I mean? Like Eddie Cochran and Elvis and Gene Vincent. As I've gotten older, my feelings about it have changed a lot. I mean, I love Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, and George Jones is a great singer.

MOMZINE: You added vocals to a Bob Dylan session a while back. Has he been an inspiration to you?

JI: I basically just got a call and they said, "We want you to come in and work on this session with Bob Dylan," and I was like, "OK." And I think one of the reasons why they had me come in is because I'm not a big Bob Dylan fan. I really respect him and I think his music is great, but I'm not like a Bob Dylan groupie. They don't want anybody to go in there that's like that because then they know that Bob Dylan would be uptight, because the person would be uptight in his presence.

MOMZINE: What session was that?

JI: Y'know, I couldn't really tell ya what the name of it was because it was for whatever album he was working on at the time, which of course I don't know, because I don't follow Bob Dylan's music. This was about five years ago now. And I remember it was actually on January 8, because it was one of the Elvis Presley birthday parties [an annual tribute show in L.A.], and I was there doing the session with Bob, and it came to be about 11:00 and I said, "I have to go." And they were like, "You can't leave a Bob Dylan session." And right in front of Bob Dylan I said, "Well I've got this commitment, I've got to do this show." I think he really liked the fact that I said that. He was really interested. It kind of changed at that moment. Because it was almost like he thought, "Well this guy's a musician and he's gotta go do his other gig and we called him and asked him to come in and do this thing with us at the last minute and he's here, but he does have to go do his other thing, and it's nice that he sticks up for himself and does what he says he's gonna do." So it was really, really cool. I think for the last hour that I was there I kind of got along with Bob pretty well because of the fact that I wasn't going to drop everything so that I could hang around with him.

So that's kind of what happened with that. It wasn't like a lifelong dream that I'd always wanted and came to do. Basically, I got a call that Bob Dylan wants to bring a singer in to work on some music for his new album, and he's gonna have a whole setup with bass and drums. I walked into the session and Jim Keltner walked up to me and he goes, "You play drums, don't you?" And I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Can you play my drumset? I want to try to tune it." So I hadn't even been in the room two minutes and I'm playing drums and Bob Dylan's playing guitar. I hadn't spoken to him yet but we're jamming. It's like, OK! [chuckles]

MOMZINE: So how much time do you spend on the road?

JI: [guessing] A hundred and fifty dates a year? Some bands are out there for four months at a time, and we don't do that. But everybody in the band has pretty much got a family and a house, and we're not all 18 years old jumping in the van for a cross-country tour for six months. I think in certain regions, like Texas, we do really well because people really love that cross between the country music and the roots and the rockabilly and the blues.

MOMZINE: I hear you have a house of your own to come home to now.

JI: Yeah, I bought a house out here in Burbank, a fixer-upper, and I'm doing a lot of the work myself, so I'm kind of living in the house and working on it at the same time, so it's a bit of a construction zone. It's getting done, and I can only do it when I have the spare time and I'm doing it all by myself, but I like to do that kind of stuff. It's very relaxing for me to be able to do something different than what I do for a living. I mean, swinging a hammer and fixing things to me is basically like therapy.

MOMZINE: "Homeowner" has a great ring to it.

JI: Yeah, well, I never thought it would ever happen for me, and then I just decided, just because I'm a musician and trying to get things together doesn't mean that I can't have things in my life. I think that's something that really changed me in the last five years. I said, "Y'know, this is my life; I'm in the middle of it." So, according to the way that things go, you need to start living it and work on everything else at the same time, instead of thinking, "Oh, someday I'm gonna make all this money and I'll go buy a house." You need to figure out a way to do it now.

"Life is what happens when you're planning other things." Who said that? Yeah. Absolutely.

MOMZINE: What are your goals or dreams like now as compared to when you were starting out?

JI: Well, I think my dreams were more superficial when I was younger, and now [chuckles] my dreams are definitely not the same. When I was younger, I was thinking, "I wanna live in a really huge house and have all this really cool stuff, and have all these really neat cars and have all this money that I can blow, and I can buy my friends stuff and just take care of people and save the world!" Now I want to have some peace of mind, and I want to have really good people in my life, and I want to share my thoughts and my feelings and my friendship with people. If there's money involved in that, that's fine too, but that's not the issue anymore. Because y'know what? I know a lot of unhappy rich people. Now I just value a lot of things that I have now that I didn't value before, I think, like family. I mean I always did, but more so now, in a different way. My priorities have changed. I'm not so angry at the business. More people are frustrated about my career than I am. I'm not in the rat race and I don't choose to be.

MOMZINE: You are one of those artists who gets people wondering, "Why isn't he more famous?"

JI: Yeah. When people used to say that to me I'd be like, "Yeah, you're right, and I'm pissed off now." And now I just go, "That's great that you think that of me." That's a wonderful thing that people would think so highly of me. That makes me feel good. People will say things to me like, "I love that song because it reminds me of this relationship I had, or I was feeling really bad about something and I put that song on and it made me feel better." And it used to be, I'd think, "I hope they like the tune." If people are listening, that's more important. And if anybody's getting anything out of it, that really makes me happy.

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