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Thirteen Near-Death Experiences Album Stream
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Removable Parts Album Stream
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1. Tell us about the band?
I don’t have a regular band. I work with classical musicians, usually different players for each project. This double-CD album features pianist Kathleen Supové (“Removable Parts,” cd 2), and the International Contemporary Ensemble, or ICE, with drummer David T. Little (“Thirteen Near-Death Experiences,” cd 1). My next project is me singing with violinist Cornelius Dufallo and a digital looping recorder. You can download a free EP sampler of that project at www.coreydargel.com/everyday
2. Have you ever been fed up with playing music or with band members, why?
What I get fed up with is the assholes who run sound. No matter how reputable the venue, the sound guys (and they are always guys) are so predictably unkind and fake-put-upon. That’s why I almost always bring my own sound person for my shows now.
3. What was your first concert experience? Do you remember how you felt once the concert was over?
The first concert I ever saw was Ray Charles. I must have been 9 or 10 years old. My dad took me. I loved it, but I didn’t realize Ray Charles was blind until my dad told me after the concert, and I kept asking, why’s he shaking his head; does he think his songs are no good?
4. Did you grow up wanting to play music, or when did the whole making albums thing come about and how?
I’ve always wanted to be a musician because my stutter goes away when I sing.
5. What qualifies you guys to be in a band?
Are you fishing for defensiveness with that question? If so, I won’t bite. All I can say is that we all have valid drivers licenses, and isn’t that enough?
6. Do you have a favorite song you have ever written? Why?
I experience the opposite of nostalgia when it comes to old songs of mine. Each new song I’m working on has to be my current favorite; otherwise I’d just keep rewriting the same old song over and over again.
7. What is your greatness weakness as a band?
I often take my musicians with me to therapy sessions to hash out our problems, but somehow we always end up splitting up after ten or twelve sessions.
8. What qualities should a successful label or manager have?
I’m lucky to be with New Amsterdam Records because they give their artists complete creative control over their albums. I would not presume to tell a manager or record label what would make them successful. That’s not my area of expertise.
9. What’s the scariest thing that has ever happened to you in your life?
Coming out as gay to my parents was probably the scariest thing that’s happened to me so far in my life. I came out to them at separate times (unintentionally), and my mom, who found out first, said, “This is going to kill your father,” which she meant literally. But that was more than ten years ago. Things are much better now with them, though we still have our impasses.
10. What’s the first thing you do when the band arrives in a new town while on tour?
When I’m on tour (with whatever group of musicians I’m working with at the time), we usually drive from place to place, and I get really carsick, so the first thing I usually do after getting out of the car is throw up. But I promise I brush my teeth before the concert.
11. Have you ever had an audience member give you the willies because they kept looking at you all weird?
No, but I once had an audience member come right up to the stage and spit in my face. He was all machismo and wearing a wife-beater, so I licked his saliva off my face and gave him a sexually aroused expression, as though I was getting off on tasting his spit. That really pissed him off, and fortunately for me, he was promptly escorted out of the venue.
12. Have you ever cried while listening to music? If so what were you listening to?
Most recently, I cried while listening to Radiohead’s “Four-Minute Warning” off the second CD of “In Rainbows.”
13. If you could re-record, or re-write any song of yours what would that song be?
I have been told that Julee Cruise (of “Twin Peaks” fame) is planning to record a cover version of my song “Gay Cowboys.” That would make me so happy.
14. What’s the worst place you have ever played a show at, and why?
There was a pretty awful place in Nottingham, England, but I can’t remember what it was called. But The Cutting Room in NYC probably takes first prize because it has people in the bathrooms who hand you towels after you wash your hands, and you’re expected to tip them. Also, their sound guy was an asshole, but that’s nothing new (See #2).
15. In a perfect world how many albums would you have to sell to be happy?
If I am ever completely happy, I would probably ask someone to shoot me.
16. What do you guys have planned for the future?
There will be lots of touring in the fall, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Austin, London maybe, but audiences in London are so jaded, even more so than NYC audiences. So maybe we’ll stick to the European mainland.
17. What music do you listen to when you are having a bad day?
Anything by Xiu Xiu, or “Music in Twelve Parts” by Philip Glass.
18. If you had your life to live over again, what one thing would you change?
I would like to have been born thirty years earlier than I was (1947 instead of 1977).
Here’s a free MP3 from the first disc, “Touch Me Where It Counts”
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