Chris Collingwood Archives

 

http://www.magnetmagazine.com/ 

The great Fountains Of Wayne just issued their fifth album in a career that dates back 15 years. Sky Full Of Holes (Yep Roc) was recorded by the band—vocalist/guitarist Chris Collingwood, multi-instrumentalist Adam Schlesinger, guitarist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young—in New York City at the studio Schlesinger co-owns, and it may be the quartet’s best effort to date. Fountains Of Wayne is currently on tour, but Collingwood and Schlesinger will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with the dynamic duo.

  The Washington County Fair

Collingwood: My grandparents had a farm outside of Pittsburgh, and every summer of my childhood we spent a week at the County Fair inWashington,Pa. There were carnies, sideshow attractions, 4-H milkshakes, craft shows, tractor pulls, demolition derbies and an endless line of livestock barns with cattle, sheep, rabbits, goats and chickens. My brother and I would bring sleeping bags and crash out on a bed of hay in an empty stall in the angus barn. Our uncle Kirk took us on a shitty ride called the Music Express, which just flung you really fast in a circle while they blasted Southern rock. One night, Kirk and his friend stole a golf cart from the security office and strapped my brother and me in the back where the golf bags go, then did donuts all up and down the path from the arena to the cattle barns. I was too young to figure out the details, but it was pretty obvious they got in serious trouble. These days, they’d probably go to prison for shit like that.

 George Carlin’s “People Are Fucking Boring” Routine

Collingwood: A masterstroke with the longest, most detailed and irrelevant setup about spelunking, dinosaur turds and Y2K—and a payoff so visceral and immediate that knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it any less perfect. He concludes by saying he wishes he were in a coma so he wouldn’t have to listen to people’s stupid shit. I saw George Carlin shortly before he died, at theCalvinTheater inNorthampton,Mass. His timing was off, and he spent quite a while talking about old age, but it’s a tribute to the guy that he was just as pissed off at the end of his life as he was in the ’70s.

 The Lonesome Brothers

Collingwood: The Lonesome Brothers are an institution inNorthampton,Mass. The pairing of local legends Ray Mason and Jim Armenti is a roots-rock/rockabilly/country outfit with the energy and purpose of a young punk band. I saw them a couple weeks ago in a shack in the middle of a cornfield inWorthington,Mass., and in about 10 minutes, they turned a roomful of sleepy locals into a whirling, frenetic dance party. When the band took a set break, the entire bar emptied out onto the lawn in the back, where the owner set off fireworks. Then we all filed back inside, and it was as if they had never stopped. If I ever throw a giant drunken hootenanny, these guys will be headlining.

   Christopher Hitchens

Collingwood: If you have some time to kill and you want to realize how little you know about stuff, go to YouTube and type in “Hitchens debate.” There are hours and hours of footage of the guy beating up on hapless opponents, sometimes politely, more often not, but always with a mot juste and a baffling mastery of the subject at hand. He strikes me as one of the last public intellectuals, an anachronism in the era of evolution denial and three-hour CGI shitfests. Sadly, Hitchens became seriously ill around the time of the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22. You can still read him in Vanity Fair and on Slate.com.

  Sam Lipsyte

Collingwood: I learned about Sam Lipsyte at an installment of John Wesley Harding‘s Cabinet Of Wonders show, at a little cabaret on Bleecker Street called Le Poisson Rouge. It’s a variety show, and this one included Josh Ritter, Eugene Mirman and Graham Parker, plus my friend Dennis Diken of the Smithereens on drums. A great show throughout, but Sam made the biggest impression with a dark, ugly piece about betrayal that seemed to hush the audience like a toxic gas. I’m a sucker for a certain type of intense lyrical writing, and right away I went out and bought his books. The heroes of Lipsyte’s novels are pathetic in the truest sense, bilious and petty and self-destructive. Yet you root for them, as life hilariously beats them down, and in the end their comeuppance feels not like just desserts but cruel fate. He’s got threenovels, and the most recent, The Ask, is my favorite.

   “The Lair Of The White Worm”

Collingwood: The Lair Of The White Worm is a vampire movie I first saw when I was in college, and why it never became a massive cult hit is beyond me. Part horror story, part comedy, part love story and part slapstick, it’s so over the top in every imaginable way that it’s hard to describe. Based on the last book by Bram Stoker, who apparently was suffering from dementia as he tried to finish it, the movie features Amanda Donohoe as the earthly servant of a snake god who lives in the caverns of D’Ampton; a then-unknown Hugh Grant plays the local noble who does battle with the beast. A topless saber-toothed seductress, a giant white serpent in a flaming pit, damsels in distress and too many plot twists to count—I know the movie word for word, and it’s aged incredibly well.

   “Three Word Phrase”

Collingwood: Three Word Phrase is a web comic by a guy called Ryan Pequin, who near as I can tell is a graduate art student fromCanada. I’m not normally a comics person, but Pequin’s strips aren’t comics in the traditional sense. They’re little, self-contained absurdities, full of overpondered inanities and nervous anti-heroes, and even the disgusting ones are kind of charming. It’s impossible to read one without going through the entire collection. My favorite: Murderhole.

if clip will not run, it’s worth a copy and paste of the below link

http://www.dailymotion.com/LittleRedLight#videoId=xkr381

Fountains Of Wayne Sky Full Of Holes (Yep Roc / Outside Music)

http://herenb.canadaeast.com/music/article/1436288

On their first record in four years, Fountains of Wayne make a brilliant return to the pop glory that seemed to be so sorely lacking on 2007′s Traffic and Weather. While that record still contained a fair share of the group’s witty lyrical play, Fountains Of Wayne has seemingly got their groove back with Sky Full of Holes. Few other bands can make singing about the mundane sound so terribly sweet.

- Ken Kelley

Lyrical Fountains

How to beat the heat? Try a new batch of songs from Fountains of Wayne, of course. Sky Full of Holes finds them still turning out wry three-minute gems, though our beloved quipsters of the quotidian are in a mellower mood. Thankfully, the whoa-oh-oh harmonies and hand claps stay intact. As with every Fountains disc, it’s hard to believe they’re not dominating singles charts with such delightful power-pop confections. Maybe this will be the one.

Sky Full of Holes
-Fountains of Wayne (Warner) [sic]
Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, the power pop poets laureate of the Tri-State suburban set, resolutely complete the long cycle of maturation that started with their debut in 1996. The characters in Sky Full of Holes are mostly in their 40s, like the two songwriters, and obsessed with a past that looks better in retrospect than it did when it was being lived in real time: The woman who still spends her summers in her parents’ haunted vacation cottage; the put-upon dad who escapes from his responsibilities into a fantasy of superhero-hood (like the kid on the cover of the debut); the dumb duo who can’t make a go of any business enterprise due to their lifelong friendship. Complementing these tales are Collingwood’s more abstract compositions, which describe an existence of longing and disappointment, like the absolutely devastating “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart,” clearly the summer jam of 2011.

http://philipbrasor.com/

A serious dude

Wednesday, 24 August 2011 20:04
Chris Collingwood, front man of 3S Fest headliners Fountains of Wayne, discusses the group’s new CD, his somber reflections on life, and why having a big radio hit can be more of a curse than a blessing.

Those only passingly familiar with Fountains of Wayne might expect lead singer Chris Collingwood to be a jaunty, effervescent personality with a penchant for witty banter. They’d be surprised to learn he’s in fact a solemn and pensive guy who harbors a bit of a dark side.

Collingwood started Fountains of Wayne in New York with bassist and fellow songwriter Adam Schlesinger in the mid-1990s, naming the group after a well-known garden shop in nearby Wayne, N.J. (the store closed a couple of years ago). They released their self-titled debut in 1996 to modest success, but achieved mainstream stardom with their 2003 record “Welcome Interstate Managers,” which featured the hit song and video “Stacy’s Mom” (you know, “Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on”).

Since then, the band has struggled to escape the shadow of its one commercial hit, while yet building a strong fan base. Their fifth album, “Sky Full of Holes,” just released by indie label Yep Roc Records, is a good example of how they do it. While it features many of the catchy power-pop melodies and quirky lyrical storylines for which the band has become known, it’s also got some weightier material. The album takes its name from a line delivered in the final track, about a military funeral.

Fountains of Wayne is currently touring in support of the new disc, and they’ll perform at Prescott Park in Portsmouth on Saturday, Aug. 20, as part of 3S Fest. Other acts on the bill include former Soul Coughing front man Mike Doughty, bi-coastal duo Soft Swells and local favorite Tan Vampires.

The show is presented by the Prescott Park Arts Festival, 3S Artspace, The Wire and 92.5 The River. It’s intended to raise awareness about 3S, an arts organization with plans to open a multi-use venue with a concert hall, art gallery and restaurant in Portsmouth in the fall of 2012.

Collingwood, who now lives in Massachusetts, recently spoke to The Wire about “Sky Full of Holes,” as well as his past struggles with alcoholism, the issues that inspire his songs, and how “Stacy’s Mom” nearly doomed the band to one-hit wonderdom.

It’s been 15 years since Fountains of Wayne released its first album. When you compare that debut to “Sky Full of Holes,” is there anything that jumps out at you in terms of how the band has grown or evolved?

Yeah, you know, that first record we made in a week. It was actually written really quickly, as well. I think every time we go in to record it’s kind of a reflection of what’s going on in our lives at the time. In 1996 we were both living in New York, kind of young and drunk. We really didn’t take our time on that first record at all. I mean, it sounds like it. It’s not rushed or anything, but we didn’t really slow down to consider different production possibilities or different instrumentation or anything. We got through it really quickly. I think since then it’s just been a process of adding more and more instrumentation to records and trying out different ideas, hopefully not losing the thing that made it interesting in the first place.

What about lyrically? Do you feel like the themes of your lyrics have evolved with each of your five albums? There’s definitely a somber and serious message in the closer, “Cemetery Guns.” Where did that song come from?

I just decided to write a song about a military funeral. It kind of came because a foreign journalist asked me at one point if the band ever felt the need to deal with the serious issues in the world. I think it was around the time “Traffic and Weather” came out (2007), and there’s a lot of lighthearted subject matter on that album. In general, I’m not a very lighthearted, easygoing guy in my life. I’m a pretty serious dude (laughs). That song’s probably more reflective of the type of things I think about, as opposed to, you know, some of the subject matter from our first album with bikers and whatever the hell else we were talking about.

I understand the shop for which the band was named closed a couple of years ago. What’s it like to have outlived your namesake?

(Laughs.) I never thought about it in that sense. Those guys were really nice. I’m sorry they’re not there anymore. We went down and met them when the band first formed. I think they were a little bit worried back in ’96 that we were going to be some death metal band, not knowing anything about us, and they didn’t want it to reflect poorly on their store. So we actually went down and had a little discussion with them and it was all cool. It seemed like a nice place. You know, it was an institution in Jersey, and it’s always sad when those things go away.

You guys take a lot of time between albums. Do the band members have many side projects going on?

Adam is actually really busy doing a lot of TV and whatever he does with boy bands and all that other stuff, producing these young acts. I don’t actually do a whole lot when I’m not doing this band. I actually kind of keep to myself, read a lot of books and garden and golf and stuff (laughs).

There was a particularly long break after Atlantic dropped you in the late ’90s. But you returned in 2003 with “Welcome Interstate Managers.” What was it like for you guys to come back and have a big hit with “Stacy’s Mom”?

I thought that taking a break between the second and third albums was actually really good for us creatively. When we were on Atlantic, we had some moderate success with that first record, and when you’re on a major (label) and you’re young, the curse of the second album definitely adds some pressure to create something that’s either airplay-worthy or trying to maintain what audiences got and build on it somehow. But, when we made “Welcome Interstate Managers,” we didn’t have a record deal, at all. We just made that record and kind of shopped it around. Stylistically, at least, it sounds like we were unencumbered when we were making that record, and I think you can kind of hear when you listen to it that it’s kind of all over the map, like “The White Album” or something—country songs and slow songs and fast songs. We had that approach again this time. When we made the new record, we also didn’t have a record deal. I think that’s the way to do it, just to not have any preconceptions or second guess what the record’s about, and trying not to pre-guess your position in the music landscape as you’re making it. That’s always a bad decision.

Do you think “Stacy’s Mom” and your earlier albums typecast the band as a jokey kind of group?

Oh, there’s no question about that. That song is a blessing and a curse. I’ve said it before but it’s true. A lot of people knew that song, but very few of those people are the kind of people who are really intense music fans and actually bothered to figure out who sang it or anything. So, we’ve always had a mix of fans at our shows—people who are serious music fans who actually listen to the entire catalog and know the songs, and then the other people that our manager calls “drive bys.” Those are the people that only know that one hit. There are people who listen to whatever hit is on the radio and don’t actually get really serious about investigating bands and stuff. I think, if anything, it’s actually been a downside for getting us further exposure, because for people who only know that song, it’s not really an incentive to go listen to the band any further, because it is a one-liner and it’s kind of tossed off. I mean, if I had heard that song and didn’t know the rest of the band’s catalog, I would never have gone out and investigated us (laughs).

You went through a difficult period following that album. Can you talk about your state of mind then and how you got through it?

Yeah, I mean, it was around 2006. I was drinking heavily and touring and I had a horrible psychotic breakdown in Japan. Came back and spent some time in the hospital in Massachusetts and then was pretty heavily medicated for about a year after that. Everything’s fine now (laughs), but it’s actually amazing how I was kind of going through the motions for a few years there. On the “Traffic and Weather” record, the one prior to this, I only contributed three songs, and even one of those was a pretty old song that I had left over from a country band I was in in Boston in the early ’90s. I was really, really rundown and not sleeping and not eating and drinking too much, and it wasn’t a surprise when that all went down. The good thing about it is coming out of the other end of that and being able to sort of reassess what I want to do with the band. I think that at least my contributions to the new record are more reflective of the person that I am and not trying to play up to what other people’s idea of the band is, which is happy-go-lucky kind of humsters. That’s less of what I am on a day-to-day basis.

What are your hopes for “Sky Full of Holes”? I mean, would you like to score another big commercial hit? Is that something that matters to you?

It doesn’t matter, no, not at all. And I also don’t think that climate exists anymore. I don’t think there’s any chance of our having a good radio hit from that record. You know, I think if we had never had “Stacy’s Mom,” we probably would have had the type of trajectory I imagined when we first started the band, which was slowly building up a loyal following and being able to get to the point where we could have a career without a massive radio hit. There are a lot of bands like that that have a pretty big presence without getting played on the radio. For better or worse, we may have made that harder for ourselves with “Stacy’s Mom.” But I’m proud of the way the new record sounds. I’m going to keep trying to make records that I like as opposed to second-guessing what kind of audience we have out there.

How has the tour been going this summer?

Pretty good so far. We’re in Cape Cod right now. Only three shows left on this leg, then a couple of weeks off and then we head out for the West Coast and then out to Europe in November. So, yeah, it’s going good. We got a really, really good reaction to the new record, which I’m glad about. And I see a lot of the same faces in a lot of these towns, which is good. Yeah, I’m enjoying it. It’s a good thing.