Courtesy of Tin Hat Trio







Angel Records

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH CARLA KIHLSTEDT OF THE TIN HAT TRIO


If you have not heard of the Tin Hat Trio, it is only a matter of time. They are sure to be the next underground buzzword. I sat down with violinist Carla Kihlstedt in the mist of their European tour. It was her only day off and she denied doing laundry to speak to me. What a trooper. She has won me over and I would be willing to stake my professional rep, or what is left of it, that she will win over your heart as well. It is my honor to present one third of the Tin Hat Trio, unedited and in her own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: They say that music skips generations and that definitely happened in my family. I started when I was five because my grandfather's sister was a professional Hungarian violinist. She gave me a little, tiny violin when I was five and she thought I had a musical ear and so that was kind of the beginning of the end. My grandparents were both amateur musicians and it totally skipped a generation and landed in my lap.


FJ: You studied violin at Oberlin.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, I studied classical violin. That was my major, violin performance. I was already trying to push the boundaries of that. I knew that I wasn't just going to do classical music all my life.


FJ: Did you get your fill of classical music?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: No, I have played it since I was five so it is like part of who I am. It would like if you are Italian hating Italian food. It is a life-long pursuit of music. The boundaries of being a classical musician are too small for me. There is a whole other world of improvisation and composition and different ways of playing and more traditional roots and much less traditional roots on either side that surround classical music.


FJ: The mindset must change from playing what is essentially scripted classical music to improvisational jazz music.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, it is, although for me the boundaries are less and less clear. The thing that I learned from improvisation, I bring back to interpreting classical music and the other way around too. It is definitely different. When you are playing classical music, you are interpreting already set notes and there is a lot of freedom within that, but that is a totally different act from improvising a solo over chords or just improvising with other people. It's more like having a conversation. It is the difference between having a conversation with people and interpreting a script with people. They are definitely related, but they are very different.


FJ: How did you meet Mark and Rob?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Mark and Rob went to the same high school in New York, so they've known each other for a long time. I met Mark when I was about fourteen.


FJ: So you were the outsider?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: (Laughing) Yeah, I was the outsider. I met Mark when I was fourteen through a classical music summer camp that he had a friend at and he came to visit her. We just kept in touch through that. He went to Peabody, at the conservatory and I was there at the prep so we were friends then.


FJ: So how did you go from being friends to forming the Tin Hat Trio?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: We all moved from the East Coast to the West Coast at the same time. We actually drove cross-country together.


FJ: Stop, back the truck, in one car?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: (Laughing) Well, we had three cars between four of us. It was Mark and Rob and me and this woman who had introduced Mark and me when I was fourteen. So we had walkie-talkies and we left in the middle of the ice storm. I don't know if you remember, Fred.


FJ: The Ice Storm of 1998.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, it was in Tennessee and all the way across the country.


FJ: Did you guys get stuck?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: (Laughing) Yeah, we got stuck a couple times. We were holed up in Motel 6s pretending like there was only one of us and the rest of us would crowd in the room (laughing). It was the first time we played, was on that trip. It was fun.


FJ: So basking in the California sun, you decided to form a band?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, I think we had had the idea before that, but as we were driving across country, the ideas became more specific. There is a big difference between an idea and actually manifesting it. They moved to Portland and they dropped me off in San Francisco. They moved to Portland and started a rock band and I moved to San Francisco and had no idea what I was going to do. I used to go up to Portland for five days at a time and record and play music with them and we starting getting the idea of writing some music for this group. It develop slowly for a period of about a year and a half until it finally became what it is.


FJ: You play the violin and Mark the guitar, but Rob, he plays the accordion. You know that instrument in particular is the butt of all jokes and if there was an instrument in desperate need of an image makeover, it is the accordion.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Well, I think the thing that Rob has going for him is that his approach as a musician started off as a keyboard approach, playing the piano and playing Hammond B-3 and playing different keyboard instruments. So the aesthetic that he brings to the accordion is not the aesthetic of polkas or the more stereotyped accordion sound. He brings a different element to it. He has a natural bluesy-ness to his playing in a way that isn't usually associated with the accordion. It helps bridge the gap for listeners, especially Western listeners.


FJ: Who came up with Tin Hat Trio and what exactly is a tin hat?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: I came up with the name. I found it in the dictionary (laughing). It means, it is like an old, archaic term for a miner's hat. It is an old miner's hat with a candle melted in the front. It's not really a term that is being used anymore, which is why no one knows what it means (laughing). It's an old word, so it has like an age to it. But the actual object that it represents is about looking forward and seeing what's ahead of you.


FJ: Every writer describes your music differently, from classical, to bluegrass, to something called gypsy jazz, whatever that means, how would you describe it?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: That's been our biggest problem because every article that is written about us starts with a paragraph of question marks. It's a real problem because if you have never heard the band before and you read a series of questions, it doesn't tell you anything. It's been our running joke that we don't even know how to describe it. I think that we are all interested in a lot of different kinds of music and I think part of that is this specifically American kind of viewpoint. My heritage is Czech, Hungarian, Swiss, Polish, and Swedish. Most Americans I know have at least three different sets of genes in them. I think in a way, the melting pot that we have created musically just fits with who we are as young Americans now. There is so many different kinds of music available to listen to now that you can't help but be influenced by it. I think what we have tried to do is to blend some of the influences. We are not purist. We don't play strict tangos. We don't play strict bossa novas. We don't play Eastern European music verbatim. I think there are a lot of bands that do that, that recreate certain kind of music. We're more interested in bringing different influences into our own music. I think the instrumentation already makes references to certain kinds of music like Cajun and bluegrass and tango and Eastern European folk music. Some of that is naturally in the sound because of the accordion, violin, and guitar combination. And some of it we've kind of adapted to fit us.


FJ: Are you avant-garde?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Um, I guess I will ask you, Fred, what you think that term means (laughing).


FJ: Out of the mainstream of thought or understanding.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Um, I think one of the defining things about this band is that it is really melody based and there are large sections of the music we play that are totally improvised. It can get very aggressive or can get more atonal, but it always comes back to a kind of more melodic grounding. So I think it depends on what you listen to as your daily pallet. If you are listening to nothing but the solo saxophone improvisations of John Zorn, then we're much more traditional, but if you are listening to a lot more traditional music, for a lot of people, we sound very out. Our goal is to bring a avant-garde sensibility into a context where is not alienating.


FJ: All of you have very extensive classical backgrounds, but all of you have an impressive resume in jazz too. Rob was with the Bill Frisell band. Mark was the sound engineer at the Knitting Factory. You have worked with John Zorn, who is considered an icon in advanced improvised music.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: What I did with him was I played on two different performances of his "Cobra" piece. He has done that twice in San Francisco and I have been on both of those. I haven't done work with him in a smaller group, which I would love to do at some point. He is someone that I admire because he ignores the boundaries between different kinds of music. I think that is a much more productive way of approaching music, not to define where you sit between the boundaries, but just to ignore them all together. They are really just constructs. They make people feel more comfortable, like if they go to see a show, they want to know that it is going to be a jazz show or that it is going to be a classical show. The fact is it is a shame to make that color your perception.


FJ: Let's touch on your first record for EMI/Angel Records, Memory is an Elephant.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Mark wrote most of the music on that record. I think I wrote two different pieces on that record and Rob wrote one. Mark studied composition, so he's a much quicker composer than we are. But we are catching up to him now. The second record is a lot more balanced. We made it in an unconventional way. We found a room and rented a bunch of really high-end equipment and set up a studio. The room was right on the ocean so if someone was going crazy, you could open the door and walk across the street and sit on the beach for a minute. It was kind of nice. It also had its problems though like renting equipment, when you move equipment something always goes wrong. It's a very different album from the second one. I think our voice wasn't as developed compositionally. I think we also let ourselves stretch out a little more. There are several pieces where the form totally opens up. In the second record, everything's a little more concise. I don't think it makes it a better or worse record. It's just a different flavor.


FJ: Got to love the title.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Oh, good. The first title came from a really good friend of ours, who is a really fabulous writer. He has a radio drama that Mark scored, wrote the music to, and "memory is an elephant" is a phrase from the radio drama.


FJ: In what context is memory an elephant?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: (Laughing) It's hard to describe his writing. It has something in common with Gerturd Stein in that the sentences flow from one to the next in a way that is logical, but really has its own logic. It's not a spoken logic. It's not the way you speak. It's hard to describe.


FJ: Did you feel pressure on your latest recording to avoid the sophomore jinx?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: I have enough pressure from my own brain. It doesn't help you to listen to pressure from the outside. I tried to steer clear of that. I'm sure that being on a major label, the record label wants it to be a record that is very sellable and easy to market and all that. You can only do what is interesting to you at the time.


FJ: You front a band called Charming Hostess, do you like being at the mic?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: I actually sing and play in two different bands. I love it. I love it. I'm totally unschooled. Well, I have taken a couple of voice lessons, but that was just to try and learn the basics. I'm basically a pretty unschooled singer, but I enjoy it. Hostess is a different kind of thing. It's a six-piece band. It's a funny mix. It's half original material and half music from the Jewish culture, music from Eastern Europe and from North Africa, but in the context of an Oakland rock band. We are actually making an a cappella record for Tzadik this year.


FJ: Zorn's label.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, I'm not sure when, but it is slated for this year.


FJ: You do all the lettering and art for the Tin Hat Trio website, www.tinhattrio.com.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, I did the artwork for it. I did the drawings. It's a hobby.


FJ: You must have a lot of things to occupy the silence.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: A little few too many (laughing). I feel like with drawing and writing, I just do them when I have time. I am not a good artist or a good writer, but they are things that I really enjoy and when I do them, I put a lot of time into them.


FJ: Do you have time to soak in what is left out of the marrow of life?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: That's pretty much it. I like swimming. On this trip, it's been hard finding swimming pools, so I have been jogging in the morning. Pretty much the things I enjoy doing is I rehearse. I enjoy rehearsing with my band (laughing). I'm not much of a party girl. Partying for me is rehearsing until two in the morning and designing a website. I'm like anyone. I enjoy doing things here and there.


FJ: You need some playtime.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Yeah, I do.


FJ: Any regrets?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: Oh, boy (long pause).


FJ: That's a yes.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: (Laughing) You know, Fred, I can't even say it.


FJ: It's that bad?

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: No, it's an inherited regret and something I have been trained into thinking, something I would not want to see in print (laughing). You always feel like you are not practicing enough. I've been trained that way. As a young classical musician, you are expected to practice three, four, five hours a day. You can never live up to that actually as a human being and a kid growing up. It's just too much. I still feel like that.


FJ: You must miss home.

CARLA KIHLSTEDT: I do miss home. I have a fabulous housemate and two great cats. I think I miss the cats the most. We had a gig in Basil and I have a friend who lives there and we went over afterwards and it was so nice to step into a living room, a place that had dishes in the sink and books on the shelf. It was so nice. I didn't realize how strenuous it was to be in hotel room after hotel room.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and has really big eyes. Comments? Email him.