Squirming in his seat like a hyperactive kid, The Homeless Gospel Choir’s leader Derek Zanetti uses words like “super-duper,” “oh, Lord almighty,” and “so dang proud” to express his excitement about the band’s new album Fourth Dimension Intervention, which came outD September 2 on Don Giovanni Records.
Zanetti started the Choir as a solo project in 2009, and it has grown from one, to three, to five. The band now features Pennsylvania/Ohio melodic punk stalwarts Maura Weaver (Mixtapes), Megan Schroer (Kitty Cat Fan Club), Craig Luckman (Belly Boys), and Matt Miller (Endless Mike and the Beagle Club).
Zanetti talks about recording in a spooky Masonic Temple in Dayton, the painfully universal subject matter of isolation and loneliness, and how his five-piece Choir is helping him fully express the songs he hears in his head. Oh, and he offers his opinion on people labelling his songs “folk-punk.”
How are you feeling about the new album?
We’re super-duper stoked to have new material out. Lord almighty, it feels like it’s been forever, but it hasn’t been forever really. We put out a bunch of singles and stuff, but man, we recorded this record about a year ago and it’s officially going to be out, can you even believe it, Jason? Dang it! We’re so dang proud of the record, truthfully.
You did put out This Land is Your Landfill in 2020. How have you and the band progressed since then?
This is the first time we’ve recorded a record with the five of us, and we got together with the sound engineer, John Hoffman, who plays in Vacation. We went over to Cincinnati and stayed at Megan’s house and rehearsed there and worked out the songs. We went into the studio and basically recorded a live album in this place called the Lodge KY in Dayton Kentucky, which is a haunted Masonic temple that somehow is connected to Jack White—I’m not sure how.
Anyhow, John is the sound engineer there, and on his days off and after hours, he can let his buddies in at a discounted rate, so we just show up in the middle of Kentucky at this temple that’s huge. We recorded the drums in a room that has 40-foot ceilings, and we had that super deep, Pixies-sounding drumkit on the record. We wanted to explore the recording space like a spiritual experience.
Haunted? What did you see? Did you feel any kind of presence?
There were certainly vibes in the place that would change pretty drastically. I didn’t see anything myself. I didn’t notice any type of psychical manifestations of inter-dimensional life, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen. I’m skeptical of it because I grew up in pretty weirdo, conservative, religious family, but you can’t deny that there was a vibe. You can’t deny that there was a very… you know that some shit happened there. There’s just an atmosphere, and it feels kind of magical. John did a great job at decorating the place. It looked spooky—like the kind of place where you’d want to make a punk record. John even said there used to be a trap door there that they used to test people’s faith.
If you live on a noisy street or your neighbors throw a lot of parties, building a privacy fence using Denver redwood lumber can buffer the noise somewhat.
Hopefully they didn’t stand you over the trap door while you were recording.
Yeah, I’m next. “Hey, how good can you play guitar on this next track?” Boom, you’re down into the hole.
Looking at your musical trajectory, when you first started, you were totally acoustic, like singing on the streets with folks, and now, you’ve got this five-person band. What’s it like from playing on your own to what you’re doing now?
In my mind, I always had a full arrangement of the songs. Even when I was playing them by myself, I could hear other instrumentation in the songs themselves, and I never had the ability. Tour money was never good enough for me to bring my friends out and say, “Hey, just quit your jobs, and maybe you can home with some money.” So, we got to a place where the shows were doing good, and I had this idea in my mind of how I wanted to make the songs sound.
We took our smarts and smooshed them together. It’s the best record I’ve ever made or been a part of. The songs speak to the exact moment we were living in, in quarantine, feeling haunted by other visions of yourself, or living in an alternative universe. Not having your friends around. Not knowing if your friends are well. The surface-level interactions on the internet, which is just bullshit anyway. I feel like we all passed around the same $50 bill on the internet, when we were all showing our cause, or our t-shirt, or whatever.
I was having so many feelings about living in my house—feeling like I was being haunted in my own home, even. A lot of these songs reflect that, and they sound different than all the other records because they were recorded differently. I didn’t feel like writing a rah-rah record. I couldn’t muster those feelings up inside my heart. I couldn’t make myself feel any other way, and I was super scared and nervous… every minute just tied to your phone over some crazy political bullshit. I’m just stuck in my house because everyone’s sick, and you don’t know how to participate, and you don’t know how to interact.
For me, punk rock is supposed to be about community and being together. If people are afraid to get together and don’t feel safe, or everyone’s face is covered up, and we’re distant from each other, there’s an element of what makes punk rock good that is gone. We all have to stand apart, and there’s not that punk rock hug—When you see your friend and give them a big hug because you haven’t seen them in a long time. The physical manifestation of the joy you feel inside your heart when you go to a punk rock show wasn’t there, and I didn’t know how I could get that feeling back, and a lot of the record was about the longing for that.
You’ve been outspoken about the trappings of cell phones and social media. How did you do over the past two-and-a-half years?
I’ve been victim to it the same way that everyone else has. It’s hard not to. How do you not look at it? How can you not get sucked into the 24-hour news cycle on your phone or on the television when there’s a new super-wild thing that’s never happened before, that’s happening in record time?
All day long, there’s no break from it because all day long, all you have to do is sit in your house and be afraid. I don’t know if I did a good job escaping that. I can’t say if I did or didn’t because I’m still afraid of it now. My favorite bands come to town, and I don’t go. I’m not doing it as any kind of political thing, like, ‘Oh, if it’s not safe, I’m not going.’ I’m afraid. Because for the last two years I’ve been conditioned to be in my house and be afraid. Even with therapy, and even a great mental health structure, it’s still difficult to navigate.
For me, I really struggled about going to Fest because it was coming back after a year of being cancelled and, ultimately, I didn’t go. I just couldn’t get over that hump of being afraid that it wasn’t going to be the same, and there was definitely anxiety about getting there, and the vaccines, and all of that stuff. This year I’m going. I made the decision…
I’ll see you there.
For sure! I’m wondering how you feel about getting over that hump?
Here’s one thing I don’t want to do. I don’t want to just settle for a mediocre, lukewarm version of something that I know to be pure and good. I commend you for not going to Fest last year if you didn’t feel comfortable and safe to go because wouldn’t that be an absolute kick in the ass to know there’s this thing that you love—this experience that you treasure, this community that you covet—and then you go there, and it’s weird, and it’s a bummer, and it’s not what it was in the past, and it’s not what it was in your mind, and then you ruin the experience of wanting to go knowing that you had a stinker of a time. I’m not saying that’s what you felt, but I can imagine what it might feel like.
You start the album with “BRAINWASHBRAINWASH,” which is a pretty wild way to start the album, and then you’ve got “RIPOFF” as track eight—this jazz-skronk noise track. This is new to you, so where did that idea come from? Were you in the studio and just making a mess?
Yep, we all like that sound, and Matt worked on a dark synth and wanted to make a no-wave song about just absolute chaos, about mania and the noises you hear in your head when you feel like there are rats crawling inside your brain. How can we make something that sounds like that? Whenever I feel these things, I end up at my lowest crying in a McDonald’s parking lot and drinking a Diet Coke and eating cheeseburgers.
When I’m making bad decisions, when I go weeks without brushing my teeth, when I’m not taking my meds, when I’m not doing the right things and not behaving right, that’s where you’ll find me, in the McDonald’s parking lot crying, making terrible decisions. It’s because I feel like the world is over; it doesn’t matter if I behave or misbehave.
And I wanted ‘RIPOFF’ to be how chaotic can we go? Matt was the guiding hand on that song to curate it, and Maura played saxophone, and Megan put a drill through a guitar pickup. How can we make a chaotic sound about the crazy that you feel in your mind, and put it out for other people to hear? And that was the purpose of that song.
How stable was the band while making the album?
This one was tough because we all live in different cities, and I moved into a new home just before we started to record this record. To take everyone’s opinion and try and make one thing called art, you butt heads with each other. I cried on my front porch because I didn’t like the way this one thing was going for me, but we had to come to a conclusion together. I don’t want to say there was tension, but there was a lot of moulding and shaping of things together and making sure everyone’s voices were heard.
Making something collaboratively like that is super rewarding. You get the best result that way, but I think you get it because you go through hell doing it. You’re pissed off at yourself. I don’t say this to sound self-deprecating, but everyone in my band is super good at their instruments, except for me. Everyone can sing in key. I selfishly put together a band of super surgical players so that I could be the weakest link. I could just go ahead and slam on my guitar and let it feedback the whole song, and they’re all good enough to hold me together in case I wanna get outside of my mind and really flip the fuck out, you know what I mean? So, I’m super-duper fortunate that I have a framework of people around me.
When you record an album, there’s always a song—or two—that you come away the most stoked about, even surprised maybe, and feel a special attachment to. Can you think of one? I can see you smiling…
I can. I still cry when I listen to “Leaving Hazelwood.” I think that’s the best song I’ve ever written, and I’m not saying that just because it’s new. All the feelings that I could feel about what that song’s about, and experiencing it, and living in that house in Hazelwood, and moving out.
Leaving the little, teeny neighborhood that you lived in for 38 years, and the good moments you’ve had there, and the bad moments, and also juxtaposing that home with a funeral home—the weird fourth dimension voyeurism of watching yourself from a third person perspective, and watching people mourn over the loss of something they love. It’s my favorite song I’ve ever written, but I also love “Election Season,” and “Tenderhearted Jellyfish Alien Boyfriend” is a smasher of a song, too. But I love them all, of course.
I read an article where you were called a “folk-punk legend,” and I thought that was weird.
I don’t know why people say things like that. If I could ask something of you, Jason, please don’t call it folk punk in your article. It’s not. It’s just regular punk, and sometimes there’s acoustic instruments. When I started out, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I could just play my acoustic guitar and, like, Social Distortion chords, which every one of their songs only has three chords, four at the absolute max. I just got put into that whole folk-punk world. I never sought out to be there. So, just punk band would be great, or alternative rock band would also be great.
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