Chitinous Mandible | Interview | “To allow a wide net of possibilities”
Chitinous Mandible is a new psychedelic rock project by Tom Herman with a brand new album out.
The project originally began as Old Smile, but Tom decided it was time for a new start so he renamed and is now active under this new moniker. His latest release is heavily influenced by ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ and various other sounds that form the Chitinous Mandible world.
“The vision for Chitinous Mandible is to allow a wide net of possibilities for the overall sound of the project”
Would you like to talk a bit about your background?
Tom Herman: I’ve been recording music for a long time now. It’s been over 15 years or so, off and on. I recorded in middle school and high school also, just figuring stuff out. I was pretty bad at making songs for a long time but now I’m able to get what’s going on in my head out pretty accurately. In elementary school I mainly listened to Coolio, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson. In middle school I got more interested in the process of making music and punkier type stuff. I’m 35 so finding music early on was initially just through friends and going to this CD store downtown. That’s when I got into pop-punk stuff which then led my interest into 90s indie, then I started getting into my parents’ music and the vinyl records they had in the attic. It was like the treasure I was looking for was just sitting there.
Would you like to share about your upbringing? Where did you all grow up? Tell us about daily life back in your teenage years.
I grew up as an only child in a suburban town in New Jersey just outside of Philadelphia. My dad was a bricklayer and my mom was a waitress and had a small picture framing business with my grandmother. In my early teen years I was just obsessed with being in a band and had a pop punk band. I pretended I could skateboard and BMX but could do neither and would end up watching people do it right. But yeah, with the band in middle school we practiced a lot and were pretty into it. Later on in high school we found out how fun it is to jam out and got more into stoner rock and classic rock. After that band stopped I started recording myself directly to tape on a Tascam 8-track. I was really into Donovan and Elliott Smith around then. I liked my group of friends and spent a lot of time with my girlfriend at the time. My parents were really great. I’d say I had a nice upbringing.
Was there a certain scene you were part of, maybe you had some favourite hangout places? Did you attend a lot of gigs back then?
I wouldn’t say I was ever a part of a scene growing up because I wasn’t really playing live aside from some high school battle of the bands events at school. In middle school and high school there were a lot of ska and punk shows around the local South Jersey area that I’d go to. Those shows were generally put on in churches, VFW halls, and I remember a pizza shop once put one on. The bands would get silly and people were having a good time. I’ve always felt a bit like an outsider looking in when it comes to scenes though, even after college when I played out live. My favorite hangout places in high school were mainly my attic to record and play music, this one pizza shop in town and out in the woods with friends. All my friends were pretty into having lengthy conversations so we’d also just walk or bike around town talking too.
If we would step into your teenage room, what kind of records, fanzines, posters et cetera would we find there?
I had a lot of CDs at one point from going to a CD shop in town. I had a lot of punk compilations in middle school. In high school I started downloading music off of this Napster type thing called Kazaa. So my CD collection stayed kind of stagnant. I was into that movie Donnie Darko quite a bit and had a Donnie Darko poster in the attic and a Nirvana poster I think. My room in high school had some books, one was about Elliott Smith, Carlos Santana, and some left leaning political stuff. I kept pictures from growing up in my room under the bed. I made some drawings and would hang them up on the wall with tape too. At one point I had a black light and some black light posters.
Were you in any bands before initiating the Chitinous Mandible project?
Yeah, I was in a couple bands. After a road trip I took with some high school friends between junior and senior year of college I made a project called Arches. I recorded some stuff under the name Arches that summer and then that year in school I played as Arches with a roommate Alex on drums. Later on that year I played with another roommate Julien in another two-piece and I was on drums. There were a lot of bands for a small group of people that year in college and some fun small shows. It was at this small college in St. Petersburg, FL. After college, Julien and I moved into Philly to pursue music under the name Arches with a couple friends of mine from high school. During and after that band, I recorded under the name Old Smile off and on. This recent release on cassette is the first time I’m using the name Chitinous Mandible. I just needed a name change, I had gotten tired of using the Old Smile name.
Old Smile is the precursor of what you do today. How much did you record with it?
I’ve recorded a lot of stuff under the name Old Smile. Some of it is lost unless you downloaded it at the time of release. I was making albums and posting them up from 2010 until 2015-ish and then I don’t know why but I deleted everything in 2016. After I deleted all of it I put out most of those songs as these separate EPs and singles. This label Twosyllable Records put out an album in 2017 that kind of documents the best songs I made from 2013 to 2015.
Can you elaborate on how the Chitinous Mandible came about and what its overall vision is?
I was changing jobs during that period of time. I had been a case manager and recently left that job. I had just started a job working at a vinyl pressing warehouse. Being around all that good music on vinyl and just being around co-workers who also played music gave me motivation to record again but I wanted it to be different. I didn’t want to drastically change the sound but I was so tired of the Old Smile name. The vision for Chitinous Mandible is to allow a wide net of possibilities for the overall sound of the project. I want to be able to distill disparate parts and mold them into something that has a timeless sound. I want to kind of walk on a tight-rope between familiarity and a sort of unreal feeling. I’m not interested in making a record where each song sounds the same.
“I was heavily influenced by the album ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ by The Small Faces”
What influenced your sound?
For this particular release, I was heavily influenced by the album ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ by The Small Faces. I know my sound isn’t really like that album but for some reason listening to that for the first time along with working at that vinyl pressing warehouse helped spur that feeling to create and record. I know this sounds vague but I’m influenced by looking at mundane happenings around me and trying to dig deeper into them. I’m also into creating a character and imagining a movie scene that I place that character in.
Your dad drums on a few tracks, which is really cool. What’s like to have your dad being part of it? I guess he was a big influence on you as well?
It was really cool having him be a part of it, I really loved hearing his drumming on those songs. He was a drummer for a while and I wanted to include him on this project since he played a big part in my interest in music. I remember seeing him practice drums in a band when I was younger and practice by himself in the attic. There was a drum set in the attic growing up that was fun to play around on. He also had some great records in the attic that I’d dig into.
Would love it if you could provide insight on the albums’ tracks?
For ‘Covered Bridge’ the main influence is this waterwheel I sat and watched one day. I started thinking about that desire to change course in life and feeling like life is out of my control at times. I wanted to make the lyrics about attempting to take control of life, kind of like guiding the water with the waterwheel. The name of the song came from a calendar I had bought that day that had pictures of different bridges and made me think about how transformation and getting from one place to the next is a sort of constant when trying to change course in life.
‘Connection in a Parking Lot’ is originally about this character finding the love of their life at a bowling alley in a run down town late at night on a weekday. The lyrics were supposed to elicit this sort of feeling of dreary emptiness of their surroundings. I imagined the character’s surroundings to be similar to that movie Buffalo 66, but then I had to get rid of a lot of the lyrics to match the music of the song. It was a bit too wordy and didn’t sound good so I did a lot of different takes for that one.
‘Summertime Drive’ is about the desire to get up and drive away aimlessly. I’ve always had a romantic idealistic vision of doing that.
‘Unknown Twin’ is an instrumental which I didn’t really have an intention for, I just played something that I thought was aesthetically pleasing but had my own sort of touch to it. I was just seeing where the song would go while I recorded it. The name for it is influenced by Spooky Action where one particle can know something about another particle even if they aren’t close to each other and I thought that’d be interesting if people did that as well.
‘Scratch of a Pen’ is about a character who is trying to be a writer, but is writing mostly for social clout and recognition. Even though the writer has a small but dedicated fanbase they stop writing when they feel they don’t get the widespread recognition they deserve.
‘Time Design’ is about “Time-Work,” a phrase that Michael Flaherty, a professor of mine from college coined. It’s about using your will to customize your temporal experience. We all do things to manipulate our experience of the passage of time and I just find it interesting. The last part of the song is about having to deal with those who manipulate our time. An easy example would be something as simple as being required to rent yourself out to a company in order to earn a living.
‘Wheels, Pinions, Arbors’ is about observing the passage of time. I wanted to use the imagery of some of the parts of a clock (wheels, pinions, arbors) to convey the sense of these gears representing time coming to consume you. I also wanted to make the music loose and calming to represent being at peace with the inevitability of being consumed by time.
‘Everlasting Love’ is about searching for a kind of unconditional love, not so much a romantic type of love.
Tell us about the instruments, gear, effects et cetera you are using.
I use a les Paul for guitar, I go back and forth with a fender jazz bass and my dad’s bully bass, I used my dad’s drums for this album, I can’t tell what the exact model is but there’s some Zildjian and Sabian cymbals, a basic kind of beginner’s Epiphone 12 string guitar, a Casio keyboard that I plug into a reverb and/or a delay pedal, an apogee duet, one microphone, Logic Pro X for the daw, (sometimes) that same Tascam 8-track I used in high school but I use it more for mixing purposes than recording. That pretty much sums it up, it’s a simple set up.
Was the name Chitinous Mandible taken from the 70’s project that released a record on Deram?
It was taken from the title of a short story my dad was reading. When I couldn’t decide on a name change he suggested that one and I thought it was weird and cool so I stuck with that one.
I love the DIY style of your tape release. The second pressing was just made.
Thanks, I’m happy you’re into it. Yeah, I just put out a second small batch of cassettes for it. The difference with the second run of cassettes is the design I drew. For this one I wanted it to be similar to the artwork I made for the digital release but have a plant growing in the middle with the ground expanding below the circle to symbolize the spreading of ideas. For the first drawing, I just thought a candle would be easy to draw since I’m not the best with visual art and just went with it, there wasn’t too much thought behind the first drawings. I like to have my work be homemade and special so when someone does buy it, they get a totally unique physical representation of the music. I want that experience to be really personal.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
I’ve been obsessed with this EP put out last year by Mile Webb called ‘Lucky Nights’. Her voice is so mesmerizing and her songwriting is unbelievably good. Evan Kertman released an amazing album last year called ‘Rancho Shalom’ as well. Again that record I mentioned earlier, ‘Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake’ by The Small Faces. Even though it’s a classic one I found it recently and would definitely recommend it. I’d also like to recommend this project called Fishy Folk. It was made by this guy I got to work with at my last job. I was really blown away by how much of a psych/pop genius he is listening to his stuff. It was a good time sharing our music with each other.
Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.
Thanks for the interest in my music Klemen. It’s something I love doing and will continue doing. I’m just happy to play music. That’s all.
Klemen Breznikar
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