ifitbeyourwill Podcast
“ifitbeyourwill" Podcasts is on a mission to talk to amazing indie artists from around the world! Join us for cozy, conversational episodes where you'll hear from talented and charismatic singer-songwriters, bands from all walks of life talk about their musical journey. Let's celebrate being music lovers!
Season Four runs from September 2024 to December 2024
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ifitbeyourwill Podcast
ifitbeyourwill S03 E39 Finale • Idaho
What happens when a band defies the constraints of time and still remains relevant after four decades? Join us for an intimate conversation with Jeff Martin of the band Idaho as he opens up about their cult status, the unique bond with fans, and their long-standing influence on the slowcore genre. We explore Jeff's recent whirlwind of creativity, including a new record, a remastered box set, and a heartfelt documentary. Discover how Idaho's stripped-down, textural guitar sound continues to captivate both long-time followers and new audiences alike.
Jeff delves into the evolution of Idaho's songwriting craft, highlighting the deliberate pace and melodic bass lines that have become their hallmark. He shares the challenges and rewards of creating music at a slower tempo, enhancing the band's distinct sound. Our discussion also touches on the natural progression and subtle improvements in Idaho's lyrical content and cohesiveness over the years, reflecting their growth and experience. Jeff provides insights into the band's early days, his high school friendship with co-founder John Berry, and the enduring legacy they've built together.
Reignite your passion for Idaho as Jeff recounts the creation of their album "Lapse" and the renewed energy brought by guitarist Robbie Bronzo during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jeff reveals the motivations behind releasing a new album after an 11-year hiatus and the emotional significance of music creation. We also explore the meticulous process behind their remastered box set and the making of their documentary, capturing the band's journey through extensive personal archival footage. Whether you're a die-hard fan or discovering Idaho for the first time, this episode offers a heartfelt appreciation for the band's enduring artistry and legacy.
all righty. So welcome back. We have, uh, this new episode of if it be your podcast coming to you. Um, you know, at times in life, um, you've got to thank the higher powers or nature, or whatever you pray to, um, for the music you encounter. And then, full circle around, when you get to meet those people and I have just this person today um, I have just je have Jeff Martin from the band Idaho, four decades in the making, we'll say you know, slowcore, sidecore, whatever genre you want to throw at it. I just say it's fucking amazing music. And new record just came out, new box set coming out, new documentary coming out. Jeff, you're a busy man, as I said before, and I just want to thank you so much for hopping on here and chatting with me. Oh, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:It's not that often that I get asked, although that's happened. That's changed a lot in the last few days. Cool.
Speaker 1:People are, I guess, with all this busyness, all this stuff you're putting out in the world yeah, it's a lot you're giving out.
Speaker 2:How many bands have released this many things within a week or two? I think it's a world record.
Speaker 1:It must be. I know American Analog set released a record and then they released a box set, but they did not have a documentary. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:They got to hop on board. Well, I can't blame anybody. I mean, a documentary is a really real heavy lift. I mean Mark and Jan who reached out to me or answered my call to see if somebody wanted to do something on my old footage. You know, they've been at it since 2019. And it's a thankless job in many ways, but it's nice that it found a home somewhere and and and it can. It can be consumed now and enjoyed by whoever feels so inclined. But, yeah, documentaries are, are, are a lot of work, man Gosh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Just hard drive the trailer. I mean the trailer is really intriguing. Um, yeah, there's some pretty cool people too that are talking to your, yeah, your, greatness as idaho. I mean it's just like. I mean I read that it that it was like a cult band, right, like does that relate to you when I see it like the idaho, oh, the idaho, the cult. Like what does that mean to you, jeff?
Speaker 2:Like what Well? I mean a cult? I mean a cult band I think I have. I have a few.
Speaker 2:I don't have relatively that many followers or fans, but the ones that I do have are pretty they're. They're pretty fanatical in a way. I know a lot of them by name. They, they kind of live and breathe my music and and I'm pretty humble about it and but I don't blame them, I it, it keeps me going too. I mean, I get a lot out of it myself. So and making it and sharing it with the world, so it's, it's they're, they're very fervent, you know, and and so maybe it is like a micro cult in a way, cause it's just, it's just a few hundred people, I think, but but and they've been there since the beginning, a lot of them. But then there are a lot of new sort of 20 something fans now, which is cool and it could be a little bit of that resurgence of the slow core ethos you know, with duster and everything. Absolutely there's some appreciation for the stripped down textural guitar thing and, um, yeah, yeah, so it's, it's fascinating jeff, let's start like I.
Speaker 1:I want to know your backstory a little bit. I mean, this is four decades. Your first LP, 1993, it came out. Is that correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:93. Yeah, lp 1993, which is really that's three decades. But if you really want to get technical, John and I, john Berry, who started out with me, we were making music in the 80s, from 10 years before that, which a lot of it came out on the broadcast of disease that I released, that sort of proto Idaho early, john and Jeff, so it has been four decades in a sense, right, right.
Speaker 1:And like how did? How did like you guys met in high school.
Speaker 2:I imagine like yeah, we were in sort of rival high schools that were similar and were introduced by a common, a friend in common. John's mother and my friend clara's mother were best friends and clara stirak in the drama department, which I. I was in the music department, but I I preferred to hanging out with the, the, the drama people, and I was involved with the, the productions, either as a piano player in the play or doing lights. And she said I've got this friend that's putting together a band, uh, out in Toluca Lake and uh, which is a an interesting area that was in my sort of micro world at that point, was far away, and and another, you know the other side of the tracks. But but so so, yeah, we, we were introduced and and and uh, we're not an instant success or such so different.
Speaker 2:I was real, real straight kid and he was went to this experimental school and had been exposed to all sorts of crazy stuff by his teachers. Uh, you know real cutting edge, you know artwork and philosophy and writing and experimental film, and you know he was an 18 and just was this font of knowledge at that point. So so, but, but we ultimately had some kind of chemistry and it and it worked so. So yeah, it was a high school spawned at that time of life, I mean.
Speaker 1:And did you have songs that you had kind of written in high school, that you were, that you brought into this collaboration, or no?
Speaker 2:no, we, we, we we, we would hang out and write and kind of jam and we, we were still pretty ineffectual at that point. It was mostly just playing music, but then going to a coffee shop and and sort of uh, fantasizing about how famous we were going to be. It was, it was mostly talking at that point.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool, yeah. And what was the first startings of Idaho? When did you guys say, okay, consciously, let's start a band and let's make a record? Yeah, when did all that start to bubble?
Speaker 2:up, yeah, 1991, late 91, early 92. I was in some I would call them almost joke bands with John. We didn't, you know, I had been playing with John for a while but he had had some troubles with drugs and he was in the early 90s. He was back in rehab and he was more approachable and we just had some fun bands with friends wade, graham, who's one of the key people in the documentary, who's who was interviewed. We were in a band and we uh, we'd go play at al's bar and pretty cool little grungy venues here and kxlu, which is a great college station here. One of their main DJs came and just said you guys are great. And there was a little bit of energy around that. But it wasn't, it was a joke band. We were writing lyrics. It wasn't taking it seriously, which is probably why a lot of it was very approachable and kind of fun.
Speaker 2:But John, john would beg me to meet just once a month and do kind of what we used to do, which was this darker, moodier stuff that John and I really had had a, had a, had a, had an interesting symbiotic kind of energy that we shared, and so he, I was reluctant because I was a little leery of John and getting involved with him again because I knew at any moment he could he could descend into into into addiction again. But but he was doing OK. So we would meet at my parents' house. I had this little room off to the left where they let me put a drum booth and we started recording and he brought the first songs in and they had something special about them and I appreciated it but still didn't think much of it.
Speaker 2:But so this was mid-92, about when the LA riots I remember them happening and you could see the state burning in places and we were, we were, we were writing these songs and he ran into a woman we knew that was a manager for a band that I had played with in the 80s and gave him, gave her the tape and she gave it to Brian Long at Caroline Records and he flipped out over the song Skyscrape and I think Creep was some early idaho stuff and which ended up in form being on the records. Those are just the demos that we recorded. But, um, so it happened super fast. We weren't very uh, we hadn't congealed yet as a proper band. At that point we're in the kind of in early stages and it. It was a little bit, a little overwhelming how quickly it happened and we didn't even have the name yet and we were thrown into it real fast.
Speaker 1:And how did you guys start to find that sound? That was going to be Idaho. How did that machination happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's an interesting amalgamation of John, I think, at the time being really into the swans and maybe codeine. He had discovered codeine, I think, and, and and. Then I brought my more pop sensibility in with it and I come from more of a classical jazz background, and John and I balanced each other out in a way. I was more structured and I could craft his chord changes into something that was more presentable in a sense. And so what was your question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So, so, so I think I think it was. It's the mood was very much brought on by John fundamentally, but then I somehow took the cue and it really worked. It moved me, he kind of lured me in his ethos in a way, and something just worked and it was very casual, it just fell together very nicely. The way when you're in the flow and you're working with the right people, the way it can happen without too much intervention or too much anguish. It was a wonderful way to work. It hasn't happened really since as much. I mean I could say Three Sheets to the Wind with Mark Terry and Dan Sita three years later we would jam a lot, and so it was a band not all bands can do that where they can just improvise together really well, and so we would. We were a farm for, for just ideas, and we would record hours of stuff, and so it happened in a different way then in a sense. But but yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the.
Speaker 1:The sort of world that john and I created together was a very um, novel sort of thing, and it uh sure you know he left it did feed off of different influences as well, like I, I appreciate now you saying that you brought that more pop sensibility and he had more of the, the, the darker undertones maybe of of the music that you guys produced. How, like it's not easy to play things slow now is it like it's easy to get a guitar and thrash away at it and like throw effects and but to with to hold back so much and then let little parts out now and then of the music. It takes a mastery of um I mean there's very few bands I find like low, for example, has the ability to just harness. I mean every one of those songs you could hear is a punk song and I think they they released a punk album at one point or a cover of but how did you get to? We've got it. Let's slow it down and let's make it um passionate.
Speaker 1:But yeah, with this sadness to it and you said something that I think it connects again is the riots that you guys were experiencing at the time, like it must have felt like kind of like the world was folding in on itself, almost, because you can get that sense in that in that early recording, which I again start to hear in in your latest record as well of this what have we done? Kind of um, oops, um. Can you talk a little bit about how you would construct these songs, where you wanted them to be kind of this slow and then I mean, I don't want to say by any means they were just slow. There's a lot of ups and downs in it, but the restraint I guess I'm getting, it would become too, too stagnant.
Speaker 2:In a way, you know, I would say the slow plotting thing comes from john, mainly, um, because if you listen to the music that I was doing before that, especially my attempts at more of a pop kind of thing, which I wasn't I was still writing from the heart and doing what I love, but, but John brought a lot of that and I, I, I remember, cause initially he was playing guitar and I put these baselines on and it gave me all this room to do these very melodic bas lines and, um, you know, it wasn't consciously held back like that, it's, it's, it's I, I think it's, it's just really what what john brought to it and, um, I'm trying to think about the stuff we did in the 80s and there's, there's a fair amount of the hints of that, but, but, but not to that, that, that, that that level of, of, of, of holding back and and being way below 80 beats per minutes, um, and you know a lot of it too.
Speaker 2:In some senses it's hard to if neither of us are real drummers and we didn't have any drummers around. It's, it's, yes, it's hard to hold back and to make it work at that speed, but you don't have to be as technically proficient when neither of us were. I mean, ironically, I was trained classically on piano and everything but, but none of that really applied to this scenario. I was playing bass, which I wasn't very seasoned at, and then the, the first idaho record, the songs that I wrote. I'm playing four string guitar, which I had just sort of invented for myself and really was not only had about a year of experience doing that. So in a sense it was a little bit easy for us to to play that's that slowly, but I just think that's that's a small factor, but it is a factor.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, yeah, I mean it, it I to me. I think that we talked about cult band status before and like it's, it's something, those kinds of things, I feel, that open doors up to your, to your audience, that they would never abandon you again because it could never be done. You know, know, like we just never heard that, and even since then. That's why I think that LAPS is such a beautiful present to unwrap, because it does bring a lot of that sentiment back Now.
Speaker 1:If you have to look at this like do you find that your how you approach songwriting has changed over these three decades of songwriting?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I've always had a sense of what works and what doesn't in my mind and I haven't noticed too much of a change in a sense.
Speaker 2:I mean, in some ways you kind of come in with your set of tools, I believe from a young age, and you get a little bit better at honing, but I don't have real philosophy or system the way I work.
Speaker 2:I mean it comes out sort of subconsciously and naturally in a way, but I can look at a song, like a sculpture or an abstract painting and know when it's finished, even though I don't quite know what the structural intent was, or or even, you know, I don't have an idea beforehand what I want to sing about. I just sort of sit and I see, feel like what comes in, sing about. I just sort of sit and I see, feel like what comes in and um, and so I think I'm I am definitely improving in some senses as a lyricist. Maybe, um, I'd be just becoming a better writer, and writing is something that you really have to to exercise to get better at, for sure, for sure, but, but, but, but so much of it is. I think I've always had an ability to craft a song in whatever fashion. So it has a beginning, a middle and an end at some point and is a statement and works.
Speaker 1:What was the first song from Lapse that was written? What was the first one that kind of got the ball rolling?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's funny because, yeah, it was a ball that needed to get rolling and I I do. I do believe that robbie bronzo, coming in as a fan, a huge fan and about half my age, coming in during covid and offering his help, definitely um, uh, was a catalyst for, for, for Idaho, kind of reef refinding its voice in a way. But the first one would have been that is a darn good question the song. Mmm, yeah, one of the first ones might be kamikaze, which is the first song in the record. But if I played you the demo you wouldn't even know it was that song.
Speaker 2:Some songs do that where they start one way and you go to record them and you realize that we're everything. I got to be the drums and you know LAPS. We came in with these cruddy sort of overplayed demos and we streamlined it and sort of you know, came back to the very good lesson is where you know play as little as possible and keep your parts very simple and let there be that space. So, yeah, I'd have to look at the set list, the list of songs, to know, but you know they're all from basically the same period, other than the song. What's the third song on the record West Side, west Side's very old lyrically I wrote probably 15 years ago and then we reworked it. But all the other Did Robbie.
Speaker 1:Are Robbie and John comparable? You said that Bobby brought in this new kind of re-inspiration of Was there comparing the styles?
Speaker 2:that they both had have. There have been three foils for me there was john berry, then there was dan sida and now there's robbie. There's a whole bunch of in between where I was alone, you know of uh levitate from 2001, lone gunman from 05. You were a dick from 2011. That's basically me and and Somehow I think something becomes more Idaho-ish when I'm working with another guitarist. Robbie couldn't be more opposite from John, personality-wise and even with what skills and colors he brings in, but for all intents and purposes, he is the same. He is the same. You know. It's somebody for me to reflect and get that, that symbiotic transference back and forth and and get to a place. That's that. That is also. You know the constructs of a band. You music it's. It's really just. I have this canvas and I paint on it and I don't think about live or but, but laps can be played. You know it's. It's the old structure of really bass, guitar, drums and vocals.
Speaker 1:You know, and and Idaho hasn't really been that for a while, you know, right, and Jeff, why did you, why did you want to release another Idaho, like I think it was 11 years? We had said or something like that between OPs like your newest one to the lot, the the later one, um, what? What prompted that Like why? Why did you get pulled back in? What was what? Was going on inside you that wanted to.
Speaker 2:I think some of it is, yeah, seeing my mortality. In one way. I mean I'm 60 now and you think about, I know, my father seemed like just yesterday he was 60 and now he's 90. And my girlfriend, in many ways, was saying you got to stop self-releasing your records. I mean, you let a record company do it and arts and crafts happened to be there because of the box set which is, I don't even remember why, but I thought, oh, somebody should release the old idaho records because so many people want them.
Speaker 2:Yeah and yeah, and so so, yeah, yeah, it's a confluence of things, it's it's, I feel in a funny way, more emotion, just a more stable. Now I think I could pull it off, where I could dip back into the world and and and see if I could bring Idaho back, you know, onto the ground, feet on the ground, go out and play and do all that stuff. Because really Idaho for me has just been kind of a pet project for a while. It's something just to, to, to for, for my mental health and for my wellbeing, it's a spiritual thing, it, it feeds me, you know, and it was kind of selfish, but now I'm just sort of craving bringing it out again, and so it's numerous factors.
Speaker 2:I was losing my my compass and I have some reasons that I think that that happened, that that are I don't know if I want to talk about it it has to do with the producer that was working with me and kind of, in a weird way, convinced me that that I wasn't writing good songs anymore, and I think he was wrong ultimately. But, um, it was a story about the doors, I think. Uh, when they released LA woman it was one of their later records the producer was sitting in the, in the, in the studio, just telling him everything they did was horrible, and then they fired it and somebody else came in. We did those songs and there were some huge hits in there. So, yeah, and as, as artists, we tend to be overly sensitive, and so we're we are there's always the chance that you can become hypnotized into believing that you don't know what you're doing Well.
Speaker 1:I mean, I respect that. I think that that you could definitely become. You know, feedback hurts. You know criticism hurts we're all humans right. But putting yourself out there, I mean that takes some chutzpah to be able to. You know, take these really heartfelt and powerful songs that people react to like viscerally, to put yourself out there and say, here I'm gonna sing these to you. Like I don't know how you, like I think about that. I, I get all anxious and start sweating. Um. So I think that criticism for some, but certain aspects of the music business, like amazing artists, have no problem with that. I don't know how you guys do it. Like I ask that sometimes as a question and they're like like I just focus on the back of the room or I just start jumping around and like you know, like everybody has their own little remedies of how they overcome that initial Like, oh my God, I, I'm gonna go on stage and talk about all these personal stories I have um, yeah, I, yeah, yeah I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm still surprised I do. I I ever did it at all. I mean, when year after year came out, I was so terrified to even do an interview. I mean because there's just a shyness that runs in my family dna also, and I was terrified to do it. But, that said, there is another personality that's in me. That is a performer and sometimes, you know, I get on stage and it doesn't make any sense. It's like an alter ego that can come out and saves me. It enables me to get up there and do it. That said, you know we're playing in two months for the first time I've played in forever. And, uh, I'm, I'm terrified. I always think it's. You know, you dream about showing up to school and not having studied for a huge test. That's what I feel like now. So I, I, I lose brain cells worrying. So I lose brain cells worrying about it.
Speaker 1:Once I get up there, something comes over me and I'm able to do it, and you know, I remember when I was performing I would have dreams about going on stage and everybody staring at me, a whole crowd hushes down, and then not remembering how to start, like what's the first line.
Speaker 1:And just sitting there frozen, yeah, so you were worried, that would happen or that would that did happen well, it happened one time early on and then I got a piece of paper and I wrote the first line of every, because once I had the first line I could go. I've done that. If I had locked on that first line, it would just be like, um yeah, oh, it's a fear I do it now too, where even in rehearsal I will be playing an old song.
Speaker 2:And then my hands, I'll psych myself out and go like what's the next?
Speaker 3:chord. What's the next chord?
Speaker 2:and then the only remedy for that is to go play a lot and then you get over it easily, but it's it's. The problem now is is Idaho hasn't played for so long that we can't really get arrested. I mean, I tried to get a booking agent and nobody. You know, we can't, we're, we're an unknown factor now. We don't know, people don't know if we're going to draw. So you know we have to Take what we can get. I mean, I'm kind of rebuilding again or reestablishing again get.
Speaker 1:I mean, um, but I'm kind of rebuilding again or re-establishing again. Yeah, yeah, whoa, so well, jeff, this has just been really like I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours, but I want to respect our time and, um, I just want to thank you.
Speaker 3:This has been like a true honor seriously of talking with you and yeah, it's just been really nice and and and free-flowing and organic.
Speaker 1:So thank you for for hopping on um. I would love to just kind of finish off with, like what can we expect from idaho's the? The new record came out in may, may 31st. You have a box that coming out documentary shows. Can you kind of fill us in on on where we might see idaho in?
Speaker 2:20. Yeah, I mean, idaho is going to play in san francisco at the bottom of the hill on august 7th and that was our old stomping ground up there. We always did real well in san francisco and we're playing there with millie, millie or a young band that are doing well and they one of them is a huge idaho fan and asked us to play at the Troubadour, which is the famous Troubadour here from way back in the 70s. They asked us to play their record release party August 10th and so we're doing that at the Troubadour and then their booking agent got us a show up in San Francisco. So it's really just those two shows.
Speaker 2:Then there's talk of us playing at some cool Italian cultural center here in LA in the winter where that band, acetone, which were kind of came around in LA at the same time we did. They just played there. And then the funny thing is our, our our publicist, ken Weinstein, who was our publicist for the Palms EP we're the first Idaho release who's come back now, 30 later, says it's all about 2025. He says you guys are going to be able to play mid low tier at the festivals in 2025 if you just keep plugging away and release all this stuff. So I think that's that's what we're hoping for is that we can get enough wind in our sails that maybe by next year we're out there again, because I know we're going to have a great live show, because I can, I can feel it coming in, coming on the brewing is starting yeah, we're starting to.
Speaker 2:I'm starting to see the potential awesome.
Speaker 1:And what's the box set just quickly like? Is that old stuff, unreleased demos? It's mostly.
Speaker 2:It's the first. It's all the caroline records releases from the early 90s into to 96, with some b-sides and seven inches on five records. It's the first. It's all the caroline records releases from the early 90s into to 96, with some b-sides and seven inches on five records. It's this gorgeous package. Everything's remastered from the original tapes. I was able to finally slow the first record down a little bit. It hard to believe year after year is actually playing too fast the pitch. The tape machines were not calibrated, so it's turned up. So when you hear it for real it's even more grand and kind of rich. So so it's. It was a chance to do that, but it's this beautiful box set that I'm so happy I haven't even produced yet, but so yeah. So lots of amazing, lots of things and the documentary.
Speaker 1:Um, has that been produced yet? So yeah, so lots of things, lots of things and the documentary has that been launched yet, or is that about to come out? Yeah, it's on.
Speaker 2:Apple TV and Prime Amazon Prime in some places. And yeah, it was made five years ago and it has been from Lowe Mark Bird, from Hammock, and it has from from low Mark Bird, from Hammock, and it's a really beautiful documentary that I'm pretty happy with. You know, I didn't, I had nothing to do with it other than to give them my hard drives of Super 8 and video. I was crazy about documenting my my life since the 80s, so that's kind of a goal.
Speaker 1:It's always been said that you walked around everywhere with a eight millimeter right there, handy cam in a way, yeah, yeah amazing handy cam.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I thank you so much again. Um, all the best with with all that happens, and I'd love to touch base in 2025, see how things are going and, uh, let's do it. Tours how tours are going on. It's been a real uh. I've only gotten through about a third of the questions I wanted to ask you. So one more time, jeff, please, yes, for sure, cool, cool. Well, you take care of yourself and, uh, have a great summer.
Speaker 2:Thank you, my friend, appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Everything was flowing as it seems to do. Can it have been this long Since I've seen all of you Flowing out the sea, swimming in our dreams when we show up for each other? Let's do it again. Gotta get crazy. Crash through the waves Without a destination. The dimming of the lights indicates that your presence is everywhere, when nothing matters anymore. I've got to feel it. I've got to feel it. I have to. Kamikaze falling down from the sky. Kamikaze every time I die. I lost control on my way down. Kamikaze falling down from the sky. I lost control on my way down. Kamikaze falling down from the sky. Kamikaze every time I die. I lost control on my way down. I'm not responsible, I just wanna be part of the team. Give me another chance to prove my allegiance is here with you. I float around the sea, swimming in our dreams when we show up for each other. Let's do it again. Oh god, you get crazy. Crash through the waves without a destination A destination.
