Steakhouse | Interview | New Album, ‘Amer Rouge’
The San Francisco group Steakhouse recently released their latest album, ‘Amer Rouge’.
There’s always been a bit of seediness in American culture and San Francisco post-punk outfit Steakhouse have managed to translate some of that destitution into digestible little snippets on their new album ‘Amer Rouge’.
Steakhouse are like anthropological musicians, working through the eyes of observation more than any tales from a personal stance. Infusing ‘Amer Rouge’ with lyrical satire based on everyday experiences helped fill each track with an extra oomph of actuality. It’s just as easy to see the humor in it as it is the tragedy, since both are something we’ve all been more than primed to recognize. Wrapping these realities in a blend of post-punk, krautrock and Americana makes for a palatable pill to swallow, though a bit more harsh and in your face than their last album.
Every move Steakhouse made with ‘Amer Rouge’ was intentional, from channeling the steady rhythms of Can and the deep bass tones of Public Image Ltd. to having Joe Goldring (American Music Club and Swans) engineer for them again, as well as John McEntire of Tortoise and The Sea and Cake mixing it.
Steakhouse is Mark Lee on vocals/keyboards, formerly of Toiling Midgets and Reid Black on guitar (ex-Innaway; currently of Into Another), who are the principal songwriting team, along with drummer Brian Michelson and bassist Ville Vilpponen.
“Almost all of our songs are written at home”
‘Amer Rouge’ is such a post punk delight. How much work went into it?
Reid Black: Thank you! Quite a bit of work went into it so hopefully it wasn’t all for naught. Steakhouse songwriting tends to come easily but everything else, particularly in the studio, is done the hard way. There was a lot of tracking, re-tracking, editing, mixing, re-mixing, etc. And doing all that during the pandemic was tough, logistically. I think only mastering we got right on the first try.
Where was it recorded and who was the producer?
The record was done in various locales around the Bay Area. We did live tracks in some real studios in Oakland: New/Improved and Tiny Telephone. And tracked most of the overdubs (guitars, vocals, keys) in our rehearsal space and at home. Singer Mark [Lee] turned a closet into a vocal booth and was happy to get the storage space back when he was done tracking.
Live tracking was done with our friend Joe Goldring (American Music Club, Swans). So he did all the complicated engineering; we handled our own simple engineering afterward. But production, I would say, was handled by the band. There wasn’t a lot of outside perspective in terms of creative direction. And John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea & Cake), who did a bang up job mixing the songs, also didn’t color things too much.
One quick production anecdote here: I wanted to add a Mellotron track to a song. Something short and simple and not too prog-like. But bassist Ville [Vilpponen] shut it down saying, “No, it’s too European.” He was right. Classic.
Would you like to share how you usually approach songwriting and was it any different this time around working on the latest album?
This band works differently in terms of songwriting than most of my previous bands. Instead of going to the rehearsal space and hammering out riffs and little ideas into something coherent, almost all of our songs are written at home and fully realized, in demo form.
And for me personally, I often start with the beat. I think people naturally gravitate towards certain chords, vibes, and BPMs when they’re left to their own devices. I know what my default mode is like. So having to keep up and react to a beat can really take things in different directions.
‘Cockfighter’ is the outlier here though. That one was born in the rehearsal space. No demo, no premeditation. It just grew from one little guitar part with everyone adding little bits in along the way. Drummer Brian [Michelson] really nailed the beat on that one. And I was happy we came up with that song, in that manner, too. The more songwriting modes one has in their quiver, the better.
The album offers a lot to think about with its social commentary hidden behind the lyrics – could you say more about that?
Mark writes the lyrics. And he writes really good lyrics, I think. They’re descriptive and evocative in a way that compliments the music and helps paint a full picture. He crafts these little stories in the country music tradition that are fictional, yes, but underneath can be informed by actual goings-on. ‘Ranch 99’ and ‘National’ are probably the two that really reflect that. Those were the first two songs written for this batch and were conceived during the 2016 election cycle and the early days of the Trump regime. The political temperature of the country ran hot then (still does) and it was hard to escape the culture war vibe. And so it seeped into our music.
Tell us about your gear, effects, pedals et cetera.
I’d consider myself to be a minimalist gearhead (an oxymoron, I know). I do have some nice guitars but I’m not a collector. My main guitars for this band are a late 60’s ES-330, a hardtail Strat, and a B-Bender Tele. But for some of the high gain guitar tracks I use an old SG I’ve had for 30+ years now.
Amp-wise, I split my signal between a Divided By 13 FTR-37 and a Roland Jazz Chorus. I like mixing a boutique tube sound with the clean, solid-state vibe of the Roland.
And old synths really help bring that processed 80’s thing to our sound. I have an old MS-20 and a Moog Rogue that I use for tracking but end up sampling for live shows; Mark has a few too. But we’re not analog purists. The keyboard on ‘Cockfighter’ is a plug-in modeled after an Oberheim synth. The same kind used for Van Halen’s ‘Jump’. That was intentional on our part and so my good friend, who’s a VH freak, was pleased to learn that.
We like old drum machines too. Those Rhythm King-type drum machines are sweet and old organs usually have funny rhythm boxes built in. We’ve built our own loops from those sounds, like a lot of people do. They really help to maintain that linear, forward motion we want in the songs. And the chintzier/tinnier sounding the better.
If anyone looked at my pedalboard it’d be obvious that I was stuck in 2004. Good pedals for the time (Fulltone, ZVEX) but nothing exotic. Really, I want the least amount of pedals on my board as possible. There’s less that can go wrong that way. Trying to troubleshoot a board, onstage, midsong, is the worst. Sheer terror.
How did the band originally get together?
We’re a Craigslist band; that’s our dirty secret. My previous band, Innaway, in Southern California was winding down and since I hardly knew any musicians in San Francisco, I started casually perusing the listings. I saw and replied to Mark’s post and then jammed with him. But the musical direction wasn’t really set until one of my old demos and one of his new demos just so happened to align with that robot cowboy spirit. It wasn’t planned out. And the band name came from his nephew, Sean, who said it as a joke. But it stuck. That’s what happens when you book a show without first naming your band. Sean was also an early Steakhouse member who later quit over the validity of one chord.
Have there been any lineup changes since the group began almost a decade ago?
Oh ya. It’s the most unstable band I’ve ever been in. The high turnover rate is partly why we’ve moved so slowly. And as I’ve gotten older, it’s become harder and harder to find good players who have both ability and time for music. Especially in the Bay Area right now as lots of creative types have been pushed out.
How would you describe your debut album from 2014?
Less aggressive than ‘Amer Rouge’ and a little more natural too. And also easy, in terms of making it. The recording process went much more smoothly than the new record in every way. I was very happy how that first one turned out and still am. And I like that former Steakhouse alumni contributed too: Sean played guitar on ‘Collector’; former guitarist, Orville Albright, played on ‘Spider Bite’; and original Placebo drummer, Rob Schultzberg, drummed on ‘Spider Bite’. Rob was also the original Steakhouse drummer.
How come such a long pause between the two records?
For a variety of reasons. One is the turnover in the band, as mentioned. Finding musicians and bringing them up to speed can hinder progress. The second would be the amount of time we have to devote to music. We all have jobs and lives so to end up with songs we deem high quality, things can move slowly. And the third would be all the obstacles we encountered making the new record. If things went more smoothly, it could’ve been released in late 2020/early 2021. That would’ve been a little more acceptable.
But we do have other finished songs we didn’t get to. Plus a lot more in various states of incompletion. I’m hoping Steakhouse III doesn’t take as long as ‘Amer Rouge’ did.
Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?
I play bass for the New York band Into Another. I was a huge fan growing up and now play in the reunited version (replacing original bassist, Tony Bono, who passed away). I guess they’d be labeled “post-hardcore” but don’t sound like it. They really don’t sound like anyone else. The music is weirdly awesome.
I also play with some friends in a band called Minus Numbers. I’d say it started as a way to hang out and make noise but we’ve cobbled together quite a few songs now. We still haven’t made it out of the practice room though.
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?
As far as actual new releases go, ‘Blue Rev’ by Alvvays, ‘Shook’ by Algiers, and ‘How Do You Burn?’ by The Afghan Whigs. Those records have all been in the rotation lately.
But I’d also like to recommend the latest album, ‘Five Suns,’ by Billy & Dolly. It’s from 2018 so “new” meaning “unheard” here. They’re our rehearsal space roommates and a really great band. The songwriting is sharp and the vocal harmonies, live and on record, are super good. And their side of the practice room whiteboard has a lot of new song titles on it that I hope to hear soon.
Thank you. Last word is yours.
Thanks for the interview! And the kind words regarding the new record. I’m pretty sure this is the most I’ve been asked about Steakhouse.
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Robert Cardin
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