One of my favorite new discoveries of the year has been The Henry Clay People. My friend Justin raved about them at SXSW, then signed them to his label. The band’s performances in the LA area have garnered near unanimous praise, and on November 4th, they’ll release For Cheap Or For Free. Highly recommended, especially for fans of The Hold Steady, The Replacements, and Pavement. I caught up with singer/guitarist Joey Siara for our continuing 5 Questions with Muzzle of Bees feature.

Could you lend some information on the recording process of For Cheap Or For Free? Where and how was it recorded, and were there any lessons learned that you’ll apply towards future recording sessions?

Lets see here… Recording the album was kind of complicated. By the end we’d tracked stuff at five different places and mixed at three, all over the course of about 9 months. It was done in little spurts whenever we could find time (and money). We tried to track live as much as possible. “Working Part Time” was the first song we tracked and it was the first take that made the record. The major difference with this record is the inclusion of a bunch of our friends. We started playing some local shows adding piano, a third guitar, and even a little pedal steel when available. So when it came to recording it was nice to have some of our more talented friends lend a helping hand. The core four members of the band stuck to the basics while the additional members added a lot of little flourishes that have become my favorite parts of the record.

As far as lessons, I’d like the next thing we do to be much less timely and much more focused. I’m thinking limit ourselves to like 4 days total of studio time and I’d love to track EVERYTHING live. No overdubs. Andy (my little bro-the lead guitarist) and I had the idea to just record a set of songs back to back to back. Like 25 minutes straight without pressing stop between songs. No studio trickery. I’d like to go all analog. Save the money we’d be spending on studio time and spend it on tape. We’ll see. We have to write some new songs I suppose. We have all sorts of ridiculous ideas.

We’re always looking to uncover new favorite artists, are there any band(s)/record(s) that you could recommend to our readers?

AA Bondy – American Hearts. This record is easily the best I’ve heard all year. It is simple and heartfelt. I’ve played it pretty regularly for the past several months and it always sucks me in. Le Switch is a great local band (not to mention Joe from Le Switch produced and mixed most of our record), they are fun dudes. Adeline and the Philistines are another under-appreciated band that I can’t get enough of. She has one of my favorite voices.

The internet has dramatically altered the way artists can reach an audience. With things like blogs/myspace/etc, what are your thoughts on the power of the internet in terms of helping (or hurting) your music?

I fear that new bands have to deal with being a “flash in the pan” (to use a Joe the plumberism). Hopefully there will be a few bands that will be able to sustain themselves beyond the flash. Spoon has done an amazing job at surviving the new media. Probably because they continue to write challenging and accessible songs. Bands have to be smart about how they play it but they can’t be self conscious about it or it will ruin them. It is so hard. I read something recently about how Guided by Voices couldn’t have done what they managed to do if they just came out now. The rationalization was that there was so much intrigue and mystery about Robert Pollard being this Roger Daltry trapped inside an everyman teacher persona and that level of mystery would burn out too quickly if there were 500 youtube clips posted of them and they had mp3s available on every other rock blog. I’d like to think that Guided by Voices music is timeless enough to survive anything. They are one of my all-time favorites but I think it’s at least an interesting argument. I realize how fickle and fleeting the internet world can be compounded with the overwhelming number of bands that pop-up on a daily basis. It’s kept our band’s goals realistic. Ride the wave as long as it lasts. Don’t sweat it when it crashes. I’m gonna be a fat dude someday working a boring nine to five but that’s not going to stop me from making music. If it’s in you it’s in you. The music that is. Not the business-savvy.

What led to your decision to put out For Cheap Or For Free on Autumn Tone.

I met Justin Gage (Aquarium Drunkard/Autumn Tone) in Austin at SXSW this year through Le Switch (who are also on Autumn Tone). We hit it off, talking about our love of The Wire. When we got back to LA, he started coming out to our shows and then he said he’d put the record out if we wanted. The music industry is such a crazy business, especially in LA, a person like Justin is quite a find. I haven’t met anyone with anything negative to say about the guy. He is just an all-around friendly dude and I really respect his taste.

Can fans outside of the West Coast expect you in a their city anytime soon?

We’re gonna do some West Coast dates at the beginning of November. It should be a lot of fun. We’re bringing the extended line-up. The more the merrier.

Photo: Scott Schultz
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Myspace: The Henry Clay People
MP3: The Henry Clay People – “Something In The Water”
MP3: The Henry Clay People – “Working Part Time”

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