Branching Out With Ian Quiet

On the cover of the Shreveport Times' Preview section.

Spring is here, sort of, and there's a record that welcomes it in: Ian Quiet's Mother Earther, a new collection that blends the ecologically aware with the unmistakably danceable. As ever, he's taken themes and ideas that are very close to his heart and created something to spread those passions outward. The album was a while in the making, but listeners will find it worth the wait. He took some time recently to offer a little background on the project and its aims.
"The genesis of it was...[I was] a year into the promotion of Like a Vegan...before Like a Vegan, it was rare that I'd spend that much time promoting a record," he says. "My audience was so small that I'd just put out a record, my audience would eat it up and then I'd begin the next thing. But Like a Vegan really opened a lot of doors for me--the point was to make it as accessible as possible, and I really wanted to grow my audience. I'm still promoting it right now...[there are] two more singles and videos to release, even though I've put out two albums since then."

In June 2011, Centenary College's Meadows Museum of Art commissioned Quiet to create a soundtrack for visiting artist Bethany Krull, an artist he sees as addressing "...how humanity interrupts nature, intentionally or unintentionally."
"My thoughts were exactly at that place," he notes, "and it was a weird, perfect synergy." The Meadows staff  enjoyed Quiet's 2009 release Pu Pu Platter, with its ambient textures which explored several themes including "...how we cut into nature."
Accordingly, the album slated to follow Vegan was "...all ambient and sound art: it was bumblebees, birds, dump trucks, random people calling for their cat in the neighborhood, rain sticks, didgeridoos, African thumb pianos--kind of primitive with some urban effects in there." Quiet had the material professionally mastered, whittled it down to a manageable collection, then had second thoughts. How would his audience, both existing and growing, take to it? Part of the appeal, though, was that it was so different from the previous record.

CD release party at the Naked Bean.

"I personally like major re-invention," he notes, but thought maybe the timing was just not quite right," so he took a step backward and continued with the promotion of Vegan. In the meantime he continued to ponder the concept of humanity interrupting nature, and the best way to convey that in a pop song...a dance song? "I was doing a lot of shows at Club Status," he explains, "so I was exposing myself to a lot of current EDM and hip-hop. I wanted to stretch myself musically as far as possible and see if I can take this green, environmental concept and make it fun and catchy.
"I think the first song was either "Mother Earther" or "Animal Dance" [he later also mentions "A Smack of Jellyfish," a song that dates back to his earliest musical development], they were pretty close together. I had those two, and thought that I'd have five to seven songs that would be the hook to the album--the rest of the album would be the ambient material. As I progressed, and it evolved, I ended up taking on other projects, some of which contributed to Mother Earther and some which will appear later."

Even as a sort of eco-project was forming, other elements were jostling for the artist's attention.
"I was asked to perform music for a benefit. They wanted acoustic/world/Caribbean music...I said okay, that'll be fun to explore." He rejected reggae, settling instead on voodoo culture as a touchstone. There was a lullaby album taking shape [more about which momentarily], and so there was lots of overlap between these divergent strands.
Quiet likes the spirit of Haitian music, and the way it (re)appropriated so much from Catholicism to form something different. He'd been affected by the culture both in Shreveport and while living in New Orleans, and wanted to bring out something personal from his ongoing exposure. The resultant music was "well-received," but he decided to keep things more on the poppy side for this new project. The three Haitian-flavored numbers on ME--"Mmm Papa (Legba)," "La Siren" and "Merci Papa" were important to him on an artistic level. "I didn't care how commercially or critically how these three songs performed, I needed to have a piece of the album for where I was at spiritually."
In May or June 2012, a supporter asked Quiet to make her a CD for a baby shower--not a burned CD of other peoples' songs, but of Quiet himself. Another fan had spoken enthusiastically of They Might Be Giants' childrens' songs,and offered the suggestion that Quiet make a childrens' album. He initially rejected both ideas, out of a desire to not be pigeonholed ("I want to be able to do a death-metal album with nothing but curse words if I want," he says), yet as he'd worked on the Haitian material, some of the first things he came across were lullabies. He took the project, and it became effortless.
This dovetailed with a request to perform some healing music at a benefit for Shreveport's Center for Families. That performance provided the rest of the impetus that produced Laballen's Lullabies, a striking world-based acoustic record. It felt true to himself that he had, in fact, done a follow-up to Vegan that was completely different, and the collection became his best-selling album of 2012.
"In a weird way, I consider Laballen's Lullabies to be part three of a Mother Earther trilogy...[the latter] to be part two." There will be a third part down the road, probably the material he initially sat on.

Here, then, were several projects that came together to create a very fecund period...one that will continue to bear fruit.

Back to the development of Mother Earther.
"I had 40 or 50 strong songs," says Quiet, "and it was tough to get it down to eleven. I wanted it to be the best of the best. Around November or December of last year, I got very prolific on the piano. I wanted to include some solo piano on the new thing, but the quality's not the best--it'll have to wait for the future."
He was getting into the enviro-motif as a way to discuss "...the planet as a whole," but began to groove on a funky new trend called "seapunk," a movement that involves a mash-up of varying musical styles that started as a gag but that's since grown legs and sustained interest.
"I love the aesthetic...musically, visually, everything," he says, describing the scene's penchant for out-there clothes, hair and attitude. "I had a lot of strong, aquatic-themed songs, and when I found out about seapunk I thought hey, that's where I'm at--why not jump on that bandwagon? (The song "Dolphins of Tampa Bay" was originally "Mermaids of Tampa Bay").

The cover of Mother Earther--photo by Karen Wissing,
design by Christine Bradley.

Accordingly, "Dolphins of Tampa Bay" and "Whale Rock" just "...happened effortlessly. It was taking disparate pieced and putting them together like a puzzle..'oh, look, this fits together with this,' and so on."
He ended up with six songs about the Earth and five good aquatic songs, yet kept one aside for possible release later, perhaps as a b-side.
He really does like the idea of sparking a new subgenre with his records: maybe "mer-punk" or, in the case of Mother Earther, "eco-punk." "I'm a little more invested in being a punk to make things better, as opposed to just doing it to be a punk," he observes. "That doesn't hold any attraction for me."

The songs themselves are another bracing batch of his very direct, rhythmic view of life and music.
Of "The Spotted Mermaid, Pt. 3," a song that picks up again with the damsel of the deep from the 2008 album of the same name, he explains: "There was a part three because I was going to Tampa to do the two shows there, and I had never done the song live. I found that the original backing track had been lost or deleted," but that being encouraged to do the song live made him agree to perform it, albeit with an eye toward doing the track differently. After working hard on a dubstep version, he settled on simply making it "Pt. 3," (the second being on Laballen's Lullabies). Originally much longer, he found it too "gaudy," so the track that appears on the record was then solidified.
Next, "Mardi Gras" features a pulsing backbeat that crackles and sparks behind the bold declaration of its invitation to party. Some hip-hop flavor comes to the fore with the insistent "Whale Rock," a song that had the crowd at the CD release party grooving in unison.

Quiet's uses of percussion are never simply about timekeeping...there's always something more in the works. His percussion is often very Eastern, sounding perhaps like a call to meditation or prayer. Such is the case with "Animal Dance," a spare and lithe track that lets him engage in some nimble rhythmic work. "I'm gonna trust my instincts tonight," he sings..."I'm gonna take a chance with you..."

Ian as wood sprite.

Of the cymbals on the piece, he says "I like to take stock themes and push them into something else, so it's my own original thing. When I was kid I loved parades, I loved marching bands." The influence of the East runs deep indeed. "In high school, when most people were listening to Alice in Chains, I was listening to Ravi Shankar and Japanese classical music," he remembers.
He's out front, guns blazing with "Mutha Eartha," (umlauts included!), where, after stating "I'm a tree hugger--I'm a recycler--I'm a dirty composter, an environmental voter--" he adds "I go hardcore or I don't go at all!" Verily, "Pollute your life--don't trash with mine."
The deft "Dolphins of Tampa Bay" is the mixture of the confrontational and the fun perfectly realized. "They've got something--they want to say," he prefaces, and it's pretty straightforward: "In the Gulf of Mexico, don't throw your stupid trash away!...In the Gulf of Mexico, don't spill your stupid oil away!" The Deepwater Horizon spill affected him, and he angrily observes "That still pisses me off!"

The singer on a sunny day.

"In the U.S., we're so disconnected from basic things," he says. "Our ancestors got their hands dirty--they weren't afraid to." He addresses such lost connections with the joyous "Sun Salutation," a celebration of the centering power he finds in yoga. I mention the recent incident over some parents who found out that their childrens' yoga class in school included a "sun salutation," and the subsequent flap. Quiet can't believe such panic over "...children moving their bodies, breathing...when that becomes an issue, it's really a problem. All people can do yoga. Yes, its roots are in the East," he continues, "but 20 minutes of yoga aren't going to convert anyone." He remembers elementary school, and a program called "Discoveries" wherein students were exposed to various cultural elements and used journaling to record their impressions. Of children that are never exposed to things other than the familiar, he wonders: how will they fare later in life?
The song's blissed-out wordplay drops the wonderful "...highlighter in the big blue sky," and it's as tangible an affirmation as he's ever written.
Three portions of his Haitian meditations are present in "Mmm Papa (Legba)," "La Siren" and "Merci Papa," and they offer the moments of serene reflection that are interwoven throughout Quiet's records. Then there's that track that just wouldn't come together...until it did. "A Smack of Jellyfish" is another peek under the waves, where "...in the ocean waves--we throw our pretty raves: and when the lifeguard calls--we never respond." It sounds like a great lost New Wave track.
It's a strong set that should provoke continued interest in Quiet and his singular art.

Three EPs are slated for production: one each for "Whale Rock," "A Smack of Jellyfish" and a third for a Tibetan, meditative sort of collection. As far as working again in other cities, Quiet is again open to almost anywhere, and brings up Austin and Tampa in particular. He's looking for additional venues that he can really click with, "...just finding that right bridge." He comes back to Texas, mentioning Houston as well, with the possibility of further strong networking opportunities. Cities farther afield will also afford him some of the advantages of big(ger) city life, such as vegan and raw restaurants. "Am I always going to have to go against the grain?" he wonders of the dearth of such choices he faces in Shreveport.
He does reiterate how much has happened for him in the city, yet sometimes an ambivalence does creep in.
"I've made a commitment to this area, but it's a two-way street...I've given the best of myself as an artist, and I don't think it's too much to ask [to truly grow a sustained base of support].

A Kathryn Usher photo from the Bean.

A couple of years ago a brash, ballsy persona began to exert himself in Quiet's consciousness.
ZooZoo HaHa is an enigmatic star that Quiet compares to the Ziggy Stardust that emerged from Bowie's most expressive, larger-than-life period. Yet to discuss this character requires a brief sidestep into another project.
Dorothy Kristin Hanna is a Shreveport artist, dancer and healing therapist who adapted a short story published by her grandmother, resulting in the 2011 film Love on the Links. She's at work on another such adaptation, with the working title The Hummingbird, and contacted Quiet a while back with an eye toward obtaining a score for the movie, which in one incarnation is silent. He synched up some tracks from an unreleased 2009 collection called The Vanity Project, and the two were shocked at how well the imagery matched the sound.
Quiet, as the hummingbird--or its spirit--embodies the male aspects of the film, and he's excited about seeing it in its final form.

The energy of that visual exploration and the HaHa persona are starting to overlap, and the excitement has the singer guardedly excited. "It's like this big, juicy thing," he says of the HaHa album that he pictures (and hears) so clearly. "I've only done one show as ZooZoo HaHa but people still come up to me with memories of the performance," sometimes merely speaking the name to him in conspiratorial delight. He's asked of others around at such times: you tell me who he is.
Shreveport stalwart John Martin invented the character and brought him to life. It was a present to Quiet, who says "...I'm still developing him [HaHa]." He knows exactly the effect he wants  the production and delivery to have, and impromptu playings on an iPod for fans have been uniformly enthusiastic. The need for a little mystery, a little dash is clearly on ZooZoo's itinerary. Quiet feels this addresses a lack of myth any more--a need for a little charge. "I have a need for things I may never be able to understand," he says, and ZooZoo affords me something to always be fascinated with, like--who is this guy? Where is he from? What is he doing? What is he about?"
For the time being he's back in the studio, but "...his time is approaching."

Speaking of things visual, there have been a spate of new videos recently, capped by the bold foray of the Christopher Alexander-produced "Dry Your Tears," a track from Vegan. The result is a kaleidoscopic moment that perfectly complements the driving positivity of the number. Furthermore, a shoot for "Everything But Mayo" is in final planning stages with storyboarding by Emily Daye and direction by Angie Cascio (which would leave "Statik," "The Gift" and "Oz du Jour" as the only Vegan tracks without videos thus far, but that could change).

Still from the "Dry Your Tears" video. 

The icing on that particular cake is the possibility of doing a compilation, with the tailor-made handle Like a Video. "Why not make it an option?" Quiet wonders, though he's not going to force things. "I like to work quickly and efficiently," he says, "but as I get older I understand that quickly and efficiently is not always the best."

Seven albums into his discography, Ian Quiet has gained insight.
"I do want to succeed commercially," he says, "but I also have to succeed artistically. I also want to succeed critically," he adds, "there are many things I want to accomplish with my music." Independence--and the creative freedom it brings--is something else he seeks.

Striking while the iron is hot.

"Signing on a dotted line and not being able to retain the rights to my craft...performing at a basketball game...that might put some money in my bank account, but it would get old super-fast. What I'm doing and the way I'm doing it are very satisfying to me." He's open to criticism, but with a small provision that gets back to the local community's engagement: he just wishes that a little personal interest be coupled with the critique, some legitimacy.
It's lazy writerly shorthand to merely offer the opinion that an artist is "taking something to the next level." It's more appropriate, when discussing Ian and his music and visual explorations, to perhaps make the comparison to a tree--branching out, seeking, and so forth. "People think I'm puzzled or confused," he says of the mixed response he sometimes receives with regard to a new project, "but I'm willing to do whatever I have to do to go in the direction I want. I do leave it up to the wind a little bit." He likes the tree analogy, saying "Maybe the wind blows a branch this way, or that sun feels really good here...let me stretch that way."


                                                                                                                                        - David Bottoms