Ten minutes with Tim and Greg of Mother Hips

Golden-Coast: How would you guys describe the Ball Point Birds to the casual observer?

Tim: It's definitely... sensitive. It's pretty quiet. I can't think of any song that would hurt your ears, even if you played it really loud on your stereo.

Greg : A lot of songs will be understood and enjoyed by people under 10. I think. That's my prediction. The Green Hills of Earth, surprisingly enough, we had a lot of people's kids, or people telling us about how much their kids love the music, and this is even more kid friendly.

Tim: But I think adults will enjoy it also. We had to make an effort to keep the instrumentation pretty simple. And at times that was difficult to do, because a lot of the songs call for more. Like you could here a big drum fill, in a certain spot.

G-C: You had to exercise restraint?

Tim: Exactly.

Greg: Especially because we were in MEAC Studios-- Boz Skaggs' studio. This great studio... there was a lot of musical equipment that we could've used. And it was showing that restraint; the whole idea behind making this record, was to try to simulate, to a certain extent, like tonight, the Tim and Greg show.

Tim: The original idea was to release a live record of the acoustic act. We were going to record a live show and release it.

G-C: What was the driving force behind that (recording a live show)? People wanting live shows?

Tim: It just seemed like we could do it. It seemed reasonable to get a good recording of us playing guitar and singing. There aren't that many things going on. But, we just realized that it would be more enjoyable to record in a recording studio and have a little more... latitude.

G-C: How has the Tim&Greg sound evolved over time? The first stuff I heard was the Ole Miss Sessions from like '95. That seems markedly different than the 2002 version of Tim&Greg. Is that a natural evolution?

Tim: It's been a very natural evolution. We've never tried to make it one way or the other. It's pretty un-self conscious in general.

Greg: I think it's mainly the songs that make the difference, the evolution. I mean our playing and singing is better, but our intentions are the same. To play music together and people seem to enjoy that.

G-C: Where did the inspiration for "My Heavenly Wish" come from? It's quite haunting, but a great tune!

Greg: "My Heavenly wish" came about in the morning just after waking up. I had the image of floating down a warm stream and turning into that stream. Some dream I just had, had left me with that desire. Then the "liquefy" thing came about and I liked it a lot and experimented with expanding it to the other elements. It will not be on BPB but it will be on some album soon, I hope.

G-C: With some of these songs, it seems there's a different delivery even. Seems like you're "stretching" more now.

Tim: I think it's become more different from what the Mother Hips is. As we've played more in the acoustic format... the gap between what BPB is and Mother HIps is, has gotten wider, just because it can! I think we play softer now -- when we play acoustic shows. I've noticed that it takes a specific... it takes a very quiet room for it to work. If there's people talking, it just simply doesn't work.

G-C: Where did the idea for the BPB come up?

Tim: Dawn Holiday. She's one of our managers. We've always wanted to do it, but she just ...

Greg: ...spearheaded it.

Tim: She just said, you guys have to do this. And she helped us to do it.

G-C: And what about the name?

Tim: The name comes from a friend of ours, named Kyle Field, who is a musician that I met in San Luis Obisbo. He's always doing these really creative ways of making money so he can not work, so he can make music. But he plays shows at the beach at night, so you can't really make money from people buying tickets, cause he plays in people's living rooms or plays on the beach. So he sells all these little things that he makes... He sells t-shirts, and he sells mustaches.

Greg: Really?

G-C: Good ones, though, right?

Tim: They're classy, good ones.

G-C: You can never find a good fake mustache!

Tim: God, what do you do?

[Chuckles from all]

So one of his ideas was to make a book of all his lyrics, like a little pamphlet with the lyrics of all his songs, and it was called Ball Point Birds. So I asked him if we could use it and he said sure.

G-C: Where did you record it and what was the process?

Greg: We recorded it at Meac studios, right behind SLIMS. We started the process right after my son, Noah, was born, actually. And it was really convenient. I would just come over and work. We didn't do too many twelve hour days.

Tim: No, we mostly worked like six hours, which is a pretty short amount of time for recording.

G-C: What was the duration?

Greg: We started near the end of September and we finished in November. And then there was mixing.

G-C: Was it hard to sit on an album that long? Did you listen to it and think you should go back and change things?

Tim: Of course. You can keep working on anything, like a record, or a book, a painting, or... a sand castle. You can keep working on it. But at some point you just have to say it's done. And especially on this record, it's so minimalist, the more you listen to it, you're like, "Oh man, a nice organ note right there, would be so cool"... it took a lot of restraint. I think we both probably stopped listening to it a long time ago.

Greg: I definitely did the same thing. "Oh we could put another voice there," or something, but once you're resigned to "this is just a bare bones album" then...

Tim: ...And most of it was recorded with us just sitting down singing and playing guitar at the same time.

G-C: You didn't do any overdubs?

Tim: No we did, we did.

Greg: But it would start with a live track with the lead singer. We did a couple where we were both actually playing and singing at the same time -- three or four like that -- with no overdubs. Most of the other ones, if it was Tim's song he'd go in and sing and play at the same time and then I'd throw my voice over on the top. And maybe we'd put a bass on it or something.

Tim: Most of the songs probably have less than three overdubs.

G-C: Which ones didn't have overdubs?

Tim: Daisy and Joaquin is the most notable and also, "This Could Be Your Night," I think.

G-C: Nobody else played on the album?

Tim: No, nobody else made any noises on the record.

G-C: Watching you guys play, when you play and sing together, it seems pretty effortless. Are there times when it's not so effortless?

Tim: Definitely there are. It's so mental. The other night we were playing at the Mondavi Winery in Napa Valley. And it was just a strange crowd, no one knew us....

Greg: ...big stage. 1500 hundred people. We're used to playing to 50 people, 100 people, mayyybe 150 people in this situation.

Tim: It felt terrible. We were both, independently, silently thinking to ourselves that we were just awful and that we have no business playing music.

[Laughter]

G-C: Was it really that bad?

Greg: It wasn't that bad...

Tim: But it wasn't that good... We were just out of our element. You get nervous, you choke up a little bit.

Greg: We really don't do many of these shows, maybe a handful of shows like this every year. We play all the time when we're on the road, and back stage. And that's easy and fun. But when you get into different situations where you're trying to keep it an acoustic feel, and you have different rooms, different sound systems...

G-C: And you have to project differently...?

Tim: Yeah sometimes you have to try too hard. This (Espresso Garden) is a perfect example of the ideal situation, cause it feels like we're just sitting around in someone's living room playing music for people. There's no pressure if you mess up, no one cares. And that attitude just makes us perform better... it just feels more natural. That's what music is for, for enjoyment. Strictly.

G-C: Any plans to get out and support the album?

Greg: I'm sure we'll be playing more in this format. We're opening for Jackpot in Sacramento at their CD release party, September 5.

Tim: It's (playing as a duo) easy too. We can go in one car, get one hotel room.

Greg: Maybe, we're think "Should we bring the electric guitar?" that's like the big question! Otherwise it's two guitars...

Tim: ... yeah we can camp. We both enjoy camping so much.

Greg: Yeah, like after the Ben Lomond show, we camped. We'll do that again. It's great.

G-C: Great. Well that's 10 minutes or so. Thanks!

The Ball Point Birds will be available at www.motherhips.com/

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Thanks to Tim and Greg for doing the interview! For feedback, send an e-mail to Hank Ten.

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