By Keith Walsh
When I got him on the phone, the first thing I mentioned to singer/songwriter Darwin Meiners, is that in the midst of COVID-19 and civil unrest in the wake of the George Floyd murder, he must have lots of topics to write songs about.
He agreed – with some reservations: “Yes, but, and, I think that the struggle that I have is that you struggle with ‘what do I have to say about it?’ I don’t want to be one of those people telling another group of people how they feel, or how they should, you know, behave. During this time I honestly have made a real, real strong effort to follow leaders, in the black community, in minority communities, and listen to them. Because they’re telling their story, and I think we me at least, I want to help, and I’ve written about race and gender bias my whole life, just not as overtly as I did in the last one.”
The last one Darwin refers to is his 2019 studio album, “So Few Comets” a collection that doesn’t shy away from political topics. But it wasn’t always so. The Santa Rosa based artist released his debut in 2012, an album filled with lovely, pensive reflections of romance and relationships. I spoke with him in early June to discuss his new single and video, “Dance Alone,” produced by Julian Shah-Tayler, which somehow seems ideal for the age of quarantine. But it wasn’t written with that in mind at all, and it turns out that Darwin was hesitant to release it after COVID-19 struck for fear of being thought of as opportunistic. This is all explained in my article from early June.
On the contrast between his new, more topical material, and his earlier more romantic albums, Darwin says: “On the old stuff it was just like I was being more like bare, open soul kind of writing, which to me at the time…I could always say that was just as real as it got, you know. And so it took me awhile to get beyond that so I could actually expand because there’s so much more than just that. So that’s where the difference that I think you hear between those two records is (between “Starfishing” and “So Few Comets.”)
As Darwin explains, 2012’s “Starfishing” was a collection of songs written over the years, and perfected and compiled for the album. “It’s coming from a much different place, and it’s from songs like kind of taken from all over the place, and ‘So Few Comets’ was a much more darker, outerly, you know, looking out instead of in, and a concept album that was created, with, I mean, I told (producer) Julian, let’s just make this with not even considering how it can be played live. I don’t even want to think about that. Which I’ve never even done before either. It’s how you going to put that out there, how are you going to play that? I just threw all that out. “
Despite the layers of studio work on “So Few Comets,” Darwin presented the album live at The Mystic in Petaluma, California, in 2019. Three of the tunes show up on the “We Are Matter” EP, released in February 2020. I mentioned to Darwin that I heard some late 70s British influence, of art rock bands. “The venue is so beautiful,” he says, “and it’s such a big deal if you live around here, that you want to play The Mystic Theater because it’s such a cool, cool venue, that sounds so good. And I’ve played there once before, in the 90s, as a bassist in a different band, so this was a different band with all of my friends,…and I brought the violin in, and I brought in a bunch of other players, because I knew that the room demanded us to be at another level.”
Darwin has two new projects going on now—his solo work, produced by Julian Shah-Tayler, and a conceptual project, or ‘collective” as Darwin agrees it should be called, a band called TechNo. “At the moment,” Darwin explains, “I’m in the midst of this a brand new project, that I’m really, really excited about. Which is called TechNo, it’s me and my friend Dustin Heald, and what we do is we’re creating music in the vein of Suicide, and sort of lo-fi, late 70s, early 80s stuff. Like French No Wave, even Tones on Tail, and even Bauhaus and early Cure, that kind of really minimal dark stuff with a synth vibe to it.”
TechNo, which also will feature Darwin’s frequent collaborator Shah-Tayler, as well as visual artist Mark Gleason, is designed from the start to have many limitations on the creative process. “It can only be 8 track recordings, it’s going to be in mono, there’s no editing, there’s all these rules that we have.” Darwin continues: “Everything goes through analog and tube. And then when we get done with these like 20 fragments that are developed into short songs, two minute songs, we’re sending these to Julian, and he’s going to sing over them, but he’s going to do it in a way that he’s never worked before – so we’re all going to work in ways we’ve never worked before. And the fourth member of the band, he’s an artist who does all the art for me, his name is Mark Gleason, he’s a really brilliant painter and a teacher. So he’s a member of the band and he’s in charge of all our video, all of our look, that kind of thing, so it’s kind of like Factory Records or Big Audio Dynamite in bringing in Don Letts, who doesn’t play anything, but you want him in your band. You find a way to get him in your band.”
Incidentally, Gleason designed the artwork for Darwin’s recent single, “Dance Alone.” Check it out here.
Dustin Heald in TechNo is the Daniel Ash cognate in Darwin’s Love and Rockets tribute, Luv N Rockets, while Darwin played David J’s role in the band. Then he met David J at a show at which the latter was DJing. The two hit it off and worked together over the years, including David J’s production and instrumental work on “Starfishing.” As Darwin explains: “He literally was the one that encouraged me to make my own record. I never would have done it. He gave me the confidence to do it, and he said ‘if you make this record, I’ll produce it and play bass on it. And when he said that, I was like ‘I’m gonna do it!”
(Featured image courtesy of Darwin Meiners. L-R Casey Castille, Anthony Vaccaro, Darwin Meiners.)
https://darwinmeiners.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/darwin.meiners
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