Chris Gunn of The Lavender Flu: "The Goal Is to Not Get Imprisoned by Our Own, or Others', Impression of What We Are Supposed To Be" (Part One)
- Joseph Massaro
- Apr 4
- 17 min read
Updated: Apr 5
From somewhere between the gutter and outer space, came Portand's Lavender Flu. Always consciously out of step with the trends and demands, The Flu takes a loose and boundless approach to rock 'n' roll that allows their songs to take off in strange directions, capturing you in the way only they can. Their new album Tracing The Sand By The Pool is one of this year's best and heightens the group's outsider charm incorporating elements of primitive garage rock and fuzzy sunshine pop. The following interview is part one from my conversation with guitarist-vocalist Chris Gunn, who details his earlier years, recording with Lily Mullen, and how The Lavender Flu evolved from a home recording project to a full band.
Hot Sounds: First tell me about how your run of shows went along the East Coast last fall. What were some of the highlights and what's your favorite part about playing these songs live together?
Chris Gunn: The November East Coast mini tour was super fun! We went to NYC, Philly, and New Haven. It was a little tricky getting used to playing on borrowed equipment every night but also really cool that people let us use their stuff. I hadn’t played music out that way in over twenty years and it was great to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen since that time. We really appreciated the kindness, generosity, and enthusiasm from the new people we met as well. Huge thanks to everyone that helped set up shows for us and gave us places to stay and that came out to watch us play. Touring with the Feeling Figures ruled!!. Emily Robb and Richie Charles went out of their way to help us out and it’s always great to hang with them. So nice to see and stay with Zack and Sara from the Lo-Fives. It was also amazing to meet and play with the Mountain Movers and hang with them and realize how connected our worlds are. The set-lists we chose to play on this tour were a mixture of old and new material and our Godz, Hangmen, and Dead C covers. My favorite part of playing these songs live is the freedom they allow us to adapt and change at each show. There are lots of moments that we alter and extend, improvise within, or disrupt completely based on how we are feeling or maybe what goes wrong while we are playing. Someone put a hex on our band years ago and it has followed us around since then so we always have to laugh and roll with whatever mistakes and turmoil the hex causes when we are playing live (out of tune guitars, amp issues, extremely awkward/shy "banter," etc). I think uncomfortable moments are one of the most interesting parts of live shows and we certainly can’t escape them so we have tried to embrace the mistakes. Rehearsed professionalism is incredibly boring. Ben and Scott are both always down to try new things and to experiment in the moment. Ben introduced his new clarinet with an echo-infused contact mic for this tour and I thought his playing was quite spectacular!!! Scott and Ben switch instruments and play loops, drum machines, synth drums and flute in addition to drums and bass guitar and I love the variety of sound this allows us to create. Overall I just love playing music with Scott and Ben. They are incredible friends and super supportive and they are always searching for new ideas and approaches and finding ways to keep our music from feeling stale to play.
Highlights:
Four Men With Beards brand loose waist Boxer Briefs
Close talking art expert/Jesse’s Gull: Poule Simmons.
Emily Robb live!!!!
The Medford Shakespearean Festival: “Nothing too serious now, let’s play”
Lonnie Donegan, godfather of PSYCH ROCK, meets Thom Waits in Hell.
Runnin Blue
The view from our NYC hotel of both Statues of Liberty
Feeling Figures Live!!!
Playing on WFMU. Thanks Nate!
Mountain Movers live!!!!
Sara’s homemade shepherd’s pie
HS: Going back now, where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? What kind of records and fanzines would we find if we would travel back in time in your teenage room?
CG: I grew up in Eugene, Oregon. It is a small city about 2 hours south of Portland. My childhood was pretty cool. I remember lots of camping, riding my bike, wandering around trying to find things to do with friends, swimming in rivers, going to comic book shops, being super shy and kinda scared of most social interactions, going to record stores, playing some sports, drawing a lot, writing a lot, reading lots of books, reading lots of comics, walking around the forest by my house, walking everywhere just to kill time and anxiety, avoiding lots of stuff, loving music as far back as I can remember. My teenage room in the '90s started out with lots of Sonic Youth and Nirvana stuff and then that phase morphed into posters and records of the Ramones, Stooges, Cramps, and the Velvet Underground. I voraciously read magazines like Black to Comm and Ugly Things and books like Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung as well as Please Kill Me. My friends and I would spend hours at record shops like House of Records and Green Noise Records (before it moved up to Portland). We made friends with a couple of the people that worked at those shops and I remember how great it felt talking about music with those folks. This one guy, Robert from House of Records, would go out of his way to help me find and hear music I was searching for. He even loaned me his original copy of the first Saints album when I was unable to track down their records anywhere. I got immense joy from discovering new music and what seemed like secret worlds and how meaningful it felt to find other people who knew about that hidden magic.
HS: What can you tell me about your time with The Hunches? How do you remember those early days?
CG: I have written a lot about the Hunches over the years and I would hate to start sounding like that person repeating the same stories over and over again. I did an interview on Terminal Boredom years ago that sums it all up pretty well. I would say try and track that down for a more lengthy account of the Hunches’ adventures. A quick summary; we heroically fought the villainous Richard Lloyd, worshipped the magnificent Craig Bell, and got kicked out of the Crystal Ballroom at least twice. It’s hard to properly express with words how much the Hunches meant to me. There are memories that got missed that I know are important to mention and the whole thing has certainly changed in my mind now that it has been over 20 years since we were a band. It fills me with nostalgic sadness and happiness to think back on it all. It feels very remote; like I can’t tell the story to myself or anyone else anymore or maybe something else is telling it to me now. The Hunches were an active band from about 2000 to 2006. The band was Sarah Epstein, Ben Spencer, Hart Gledhill and myself. I remember laughing a lot; like deep maniacal laughter. Staying up until 6:00 am screaming and dancing to CCR with Sarah and taking breaks to go dive in the bushes outside. Writing my lyrics and knowing that Hart would always sing them in his perfect way and make them believable even if they were cheesy as hell (10000 miles, Murdering Train Track Blues, etc…). Listening to our first demo cd with Ben and feeling so proud of it. Calling Sarah after every one of our shows to check in on who liked it and to make sure no one was mad at us. I remember how amazing it felt to begin to discover how to write music that felt like it was our own voice. Walking and talking with Hart and feeling so excited about it all and finding so much comfort in our friendship and knowing he had my back. Hart could always see through the bullshit and he helped me understand life. We grew up in Eugene together and we discovered how to make music together and we learned how hard that could be also. I remember how much it meant to know that Hart, Ben, and Sarah believed in me and in our music. We used to play shows at places like the Jasmine Tree, Satyricon, and the Dunes. Places that are long gone now. We toured all over the U.S. and Canada and we toured Europe twice. We played live on John Peel’s radio program. Our shows could get pretty wild. I have talked a lot about the insanity of the Hunches and the sadness of it all but I don’t know if I talked enough about how great it felt in the beginning. For a second everything made sense and I thought we had it all figured out and I am really grateful I got to fully believe in that feeling even if it only lasted a moment.
HS: Is that band from how you met Larry Hardy from In The Red Recordings?
CG: No, Hart and I actually met Larry in 1997 or 1998 when we were in high school playing in our first band, the Conmen. We were 17 years old and somehow were allowed to open a show at a bar in Eugene with the Cheater Slicks and the Necessary Evils who were on tour together. We made sure to put on our best punk lip sneers and we did our Dead Boys, Real Kids, and Pagans covers and our original songs like ‘Bloodsucker” and “You Better Think Twice” and Larry Hardy seemed impressed that we were all so young and were into that type of music. He was really nice and gave us lots of encouragement. I went home and went to class the next day but Hart hung out all night with the Cheater Slicks and the Necessary Evils and skipped school and had a blast. All those guys were really cool and kind to us and that meant a lot to me as a kid trying to figure out how to channel my love of music.
It is important to note that the Cheater Slicks will always be one of my favorite bands because of this early show we played together and how it changed my life. They were the first band I saw that felt honest, alive, and outside of everything. You can tell when you are watching a band that really lives for their art and lives because of it and doesn't need a bunch of attention because the music itself sustains them. Watching the Cheater Slicks do "Mystery Ship" live at this show was unreal, it altered how I thought, and it is a moment I can live within forever. David Shannon is one of my all time favorite guitarists. His free playing and unique use of volume, feedback, reverb, and multiple types of fuzz and distortion like layers of paint has inspired me endlessly. The Cheater Slicks had their own sound and they still do and I really began to understand how important that was after seeing them live.
I stayed in contact with Larry over the next couple of years after meeting him at this show and sent him our music after we moved to Portland and formed the Hunches. Larry was an incredible support to us back then and we could not have done it without his enthusiastic belief in us.
HS: What can you tell me about your affiliation with the old Bay Area garage punk band The Hospitals?
CG: The Hospitals actually started as a Portland band. I met Adam Stonehouse from the Hospitals way back in 2000 or something like that. I still have the Royal Trux mixed tape he made me for my 21st birthday. I got to watch most of the early Hospitals shows when it was Adam and Rod Meyer as a two piece and they were always so good. Rod was another guitarist that I really looked up to. Rod is an absolute original player. I learned a lot watching him in the Hospitals and Eat Skull and getting to play with him in later Hospitals lineups. He gave me my first Hyperfuzz 2 pedal which was a game changer in helping me actualize the guitar sounds I heard in my head. Adam moved to the bay area and the band had lots of lineup changes but Adam and I always maintained contact and our friendship. I ended up playing on the Hairdryer Peace album and joined the band for a west coast tour and a European tour. I moved to San Francisco and joined the Hospitals. We had a few different lineups down there, played live a few times, and did a little bit of recording. I also played a bit on the Angel album. Adam has been a major influence in my life, he has been a true friend to me through tough times, he has taught me about all sorts of stuff, and the music he has made is timeless and completely in a universe of its own. Hairdryer Peace is an album that reshaped how I thought about music.
HS: What was it like working with Lily Mullen on her new album? How special was it making that album?
CG: Working on the Lily Mullen album was a wonderfully unique experience and unlike anything I had tried before. I learned a ton and I am super happy with how that album turned out. Lily is a visionary artist and one of the most free and original singers I have ever worked with. For those that don’t know her, Lily Mullen is an artist and musician with Down syndrome from Forest Grove, Oregon. Her poetry and her songwriting are in a universe of their own and her stage presence is up there with all the greats. I first met Lily in a Zoom meeting during the pandemic. She had her acoustic guitar with her and she just launched into this song that was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was played and sung with powerful abandon and just a ferocious need to get out this message she was channeling. I ended up meeting Lily in real life later on and we talked about making an album together. Lily and I worked for months and months arranging her lyrics into songs and practicing them together. Miranda Soileau-Pratt generously joined up with us and helped with this process. She contributed backing vocals, guitar, and keyboards. Our collaborative process was to talk about the vibe Lily was feeling for a song and arrange it around that idea. You can see our notes from this process on the lyric insert that comes with Lily’s record. We set up songs to each have their own instrumentation that would bring sonic depth to the album and provide variety to support the chords and lyrics Lily had written. We rehearsed and rehearsed and then spent a weekend recording it all live at Justin Higgin’s studio in Eugene. Scott Simmons joined up on bass guitar as well as incredible bongos and Kate Williams played backing sparrow whistle and helped with all sorts of other stuff. It was so fun and free and I felt really happy to be involved with it. The recording session was filled with crazy laughter, wig wearing, bird channeling, and some heartfelt tears. The whole session Lily sang to a photograph of her mom holding her as a baby. There were a couple songs that Lily just improvised completely and totally killed it. She is so amazing. Mississippi Records/Meds agreed to release the album and that just blew Lily and I away!
HS: For our readers unfamiliar, tell us about the origins of The Lavender Flu. How did you meet everyone for it to morph into a full band and when did you start playing shows together?
CG: Lavender Flu began around 2007 or so during a period of time where my sense of seIf pretty much completely collapsed and dissolved. I had a song or a sound that spoke with me through this time and that replayed incessantly in my thoughts for years after that and it fractured, rearranged, and kind of became amorphous. I couldn’t figure out how to express it with my usual songwriting process so I bought a Tascam 244 4-track and tried to find another way. At first it was going to be one song on side A and B of a 7 inch but after many years of recording and mixing it became our debut double album, Heavy Air. When I was recording Heavy Air I didn’t know if I wanted to play shows anymore but when we finally finished it I decided it would be cool to try and see how those songs would sound live. The first Flu lineup was Lucas Gunn, Scott Simmons, Ben Spencer, and me. Ben was the drummer from the Hunches, I met Scott at the record store he used to own, and I met my brother in the hospital when he was born. All those guys played on many of the songs on Heavy Air and they were all instrumental in helping me with it. Scott really helped me organize and shape the record and he also put it out on his label, Meds. I think the first shows we played were in 2015. We started writing songs as a full band and that eventually became the album Mow The Glass.
HS: How do you usually approach songwriting in The Lavender Flu? What kind of role does improvisation have when it comes to creating together? Also what themes or topics are you more drawn to singing about?
CG: We approach songwriting and music making in as many ways as we can. Sometimes we record an instrumental improvisation as it's written. Sometimes we work and rework a song as a band for years and other times it comes together in a few minutes. Some songs start with a guitar melody and others are built around a bassline or a drum machine beat. Some songs have different singers. Some of our songs are built entirely on a 4 track by one person or are a loop made from another of our songs. We re-record different versions of our songs all the time. I think the only constant in our songwriting is that we are always looking for that mystical feeling when we write. We always know when the pieces are aligned correctly and you are connecting with the hidden side of things. It’s easy to tell when you are not tapping into that because the music doesn't feel right. Songwriting that feels forced or trapped in a pattern is the enemy. The goal is to not get imprisoned by our own, or others’, impression of what we are supposed to be. Our band is not one thing or heading in some direction or moving up or down or cleaning up our sound or anything like that. I like to think that we are constantly trying to move away from everything and also towards it at the same time. Check out our song "Part Time Post post post post post post post punks" for more on this. We call our process giving the song "a chance." Home recording is also a huge part of our songwriting. Our Tascam 246-4 track and our Tascam 38- 8 track are basically members of our band and they guide us by breaking down regularly or erasing over tracks and also by fixing themselves magically when it's time to finish a recording. The constant rewind and fast forward requirement is a handy forced pause to think about next moves. We recently had to say goodbye to an unrepairable former member of our band, the MCI JH-110- 2 track, but we are excited to welcome our Otari MX5050 to the band. The Otari is known as ‘the toyota camry’ of 2-tracks and it saved the day when it came to final mixes of Tracing the Sand by the Pool. When lyric writing is feeling good I enjoy writing about topics and themes that I don’t logically understand or that don’t make immediate sense. This technique makes space for meanings to show up later and it allows other listeners to attach their own perspectives and experiences to the song. I have had moments years after writing lyrics when I realized that I was living the words my former self had written. You can predict futures and send messages across decades if you use a certain universal vagueness in what you are writing. I also like writing very directly about things happening in my life or things that are annoying me in a bratty way. It’s interesting to write in as many voices as possible and to not shy away from emotion and sincerity. Humor is necessary also. I think that lyrics are incredibly important and I can spend days and days reworking the words to a song. Like making music; I know when lyrics are done because of a feeling that presents itself while writing them down and when they are ready to be finished. You have to align sound, with emotion, with meaning and it can take months or years but sometimes it writes itself immediately. I love reading and I am always inspired by authors like Silvina Ocampo, Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood, Gene Wolfe, Leonora Carrington, Robert W. Chambers, Borges, Philip K. Dick, Roberto Bolano, Suzette Haden Elgen, Ursula K. Leguin, Octavia Butler, and James Tiptree Jr. My lyrics are steeped in ideas and characters from books written by these people.
HS: Your massive 30-song debut double-album Heavy Air was conceived over a period of years before its release in 2016. What are your memories associated with recording that album?
CG: Heavy Air took me about 8 years to complete. I recorded everything I could think of and many many friends came over and made music with me. We drank lots of beer and tried to find new ways to make music. The idea was always to just hit record and see what happened. I remember micing up the sound of the street outside the window of my apartment in San Francisco, recording a bowl of oatmeal, washing machines, showers, oceans, forests, bushes, and Hart doing his best acapella Huggies commercial. I moved back up to Portland and lived at the house that was also the recording studio where the Hunches made our last album. I had access to all sorts of musical equipment and microphones. Justin Higgins, my friend who ran this studio, worked with me endlessly to try any ideas I might have. I remember my brother helping me write songs and make sounds and how much that meant to me. I had a hand held tape recorder I walked around with that I would use as a way to capture sounds anywhere I went. I took my 4 track with me to Eugene and the coast and recorded out there. I remember recording the sound of the jocks next door having a party and slowly adding reverb in and out of the festivities. You can hear this party at the end of “Tomorrow Cleaners.” Scott Simmons worked with me endlessly to record and sift through the massive amount of material. He helped me believe that what I was doing was good and to keep going with it. I see some reviews of The Flu that say we are a band that does proper albums here and that we dabble in experimental albums over there or that at heart we are just a ‘song’ oriented garage band and I have to push back on that a little and refer back to this first album. I would say that Heavy Air really defines our band perfectly. It is a double album with a little bit of everything we have done since and I am immensely proud of it. I think it captures the nervous breakdown I was trying to express and it provides a cosmology of sounds that our band has been able to explore since it came out.
HS: How do you feel looking back on the rest of The Flu's catalog? Do you still like or relate to past albums?
CG: I am really happy with the Flu’s catalog. We have released eight albums and a tape in about ten years and I would say that is a pretty good run. Every one of our albums has its own thing going on and also feels completely connected to our universe. Some of our albums took years or close to a decade to record and some were done in a couple of days or even one hour. We have albums that are instrumental and fully improvised and also albums that are detail oriented studio records. Some of our albums are home recorded sound collages eating pop songs and other records are longer and noisier or a mixture of it all. I like that we are completely free to do what we want when we want with our music. I can go back to any of our albums and still feel something and learn something from it. My only regret is that I made a bad joke about "Barbarian Dust" being a "meditation on cosmic biker rock" and ever since then we have been called a "cosmic biker rock" band by at least one of the one or two reviews we get a year and I find that mildly annoying. I know no one actually cares or has spent any time thinking about this but me and maybe Mitch Cardwell but I am officially setting the record straight…. WE ARE MANY THINGS, BUT ONE THING WE ARE NOT IS A "COSMIC BIKER ROCK" BAND.
The second part to this interview will be posted at a later date.
