Thalia Zedek Talks About Her Four-Plus Decades Recording And Touring As An Independent Artist, Her Experiences With Various Labels, And Her Insights Into Working As A Musician In The 21st Century
Thalia Zedek has a lot to share. A Boston veteran, she moved to the city in 1979, fell in with the innovative DIY collective, Propeller Records, and recorded her first singles for that label with her band, Dangerous Birds. Her next project, Uzi, signed to Homestead Records, and that led to her becoming the lead singer for the New York-based no wave band, Live Skull. She recorded two albums with Live Skull, did her first major tours of the U.S. and Europe, and learned a lot about working as an independent artist.
But it was Zedek’s ‘90s band, Come, that got her the most attention. Together with co-guitarist, Chris Brokaw, and the rhythm section of Arthur Johnson (drums) and Sean O'Brien (bass), the band’s tight songwriting and emotional intensity earned effusive critical praise, and, when they weren’t headlining, opening slots for powerhouse contemporary acts like Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr.
“Come did the Sub Pop Single’s Club,” Zedek says about the band’s first release, “Car,” which came out in 1991. “Chris Brokaw’s other band, Codeine, was on Sub Pop and had already done the Sub Pop Single’s Club, and it was through that connection that Sub Pop was interested in Come.”
Come ultimately signed with Matador Records—the next project of former Homestead head, Gerard Cosloy—and released four albums and various EPs, the last one, Gently, Down the Stream, being a double LP. The band broke up in 2001, and Zedek has been busy since then, both with her solo band, the Thalia Zedek Band, and her noisy collaboration, E, with Gavin McCarthy (Karate) and Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune).
I last spoke with Zedek in 2016 for Premier Guitar, and our focus there was songwriting, guitar playing, and gear. Here we talked about the Boston scene back when it was young and DIY, her experiences with various independent labels, how budgets have changed since the big money ‘90s, her system for booking international tours, and her thoughts about the impact of streaming on her audience and sales.
When did you first move to Boston?
I came here in 1979 to go to school, ostensibly, but I was already involved with music. I ended up playing in a bunch of bands, and my school thing lasted about one semester. I was in a band called, White Women, and that band went through a bunch of different changes. I started out as the drummer, but then played guitar, and ended up as the lead singer. That ended, and my next band, Dangerous Birds, was a different group of people.
Did you record with Dangerous Birds?
Yes. We were part of a record label collective called Propeller Records. Propeller Records was started by a couple of guys I was sharing an apartment with in Allston. Dangerous Birds put out a single on Propeller, and we also put out a track on a four-song compilation EP.
Was Propeller self-funded and DIY?
Yes, super DIY. It was started by my roommate Justin. Justin Burrill and Steve Gregoropoulos had this band called the Wild Stares, and they were friends with this band called V. I don’t remember exactly who started the label, but I know that Justin was definitely the head it. The idea was that there were all these bands—there was this scene happening in Boston—but there weren’t really any record labels. There was Ace of Hearts at the time, and they had put out the Mission of Burma EP [Signals, Calls, and Marches, in 1981, and also their full length, Vs., in 1982], but there weren’t really any other labels. We were all friends and we decided to pool our resources. I don’t remember how many bands, but there was Dangerous Birds, Wild Stares, Christmas, V, the Neats, 21-645, and CCCP-TV. We would hold these big concerts and put all the money toward the release. It was everyone helping everyone else, and we took turns doing releases. V put out a 12-inch EP. Dangerous Birds put out a 45 and had a track on a compilation EP. The Neats put out a couple of singles. Wild Stares put out some stuff. We had a cassette compilation, too, and White Women was on that, but I wasn’t on that track.
Did you hold those concerts in private spaces, like lofts?
There were a lot of spaces like Gallery East, and we put on shows there, but also in clubs. We put on a show at the Underground in Allston. There was a pretty happening club scene back then—the Underground, a club called Streets that opened right after that—and my memory of the benefits and gigs we had, I think I remember them being mostly in clubs.
Did Martin Swope, from Mission of Burma, produce Dangerous Birds’ single?
He did. He was dating one of the members of the band at the time, and we got to know him through that. Of course, we were all huge fans of his from his work with Mission of Burma.
Did you get airplay on local radio, too?
We were getting a lot of airplay on college stations like WMBR (MIT) and WZBC (Boston College), and maybe a little bit on WBCN, too. I think WBCN was more major label-focused at that point, but they were doing the cool stuff, like Gang of Four, who were on a major label. They also played local bands on WBCN, but it was a bit ghettoized.
Did you do the grunt work yourselves, mailing the singles to radio stations and things like that?
I wasn’t really that involved in that part of it. I was living with Justin and Michael—Michael Cudahy from Christmas, and he later had that band Combustible Edison—but I wasn’t super involved in the strategy of the label. I was really young at the time, and those guys were a little older than me. I helped with some stuff, but I definitely wasn't the mastermind behind it.
After Dangerous Birds, you were with Uzi and then Live Skull?
After Dangerous Birds broke up, I started Uzi, and that was from 1984 through 1987. We released an EP, Sleep Asylum, in 1986 on Homestead Records.
Homestead was that label that first signed Dinosaur Jr?
Yeah, that was Gerard Cosloy’s label. That’s where he cut his teeth before he started his own label, which was Matador. I was on Homestead with Uzi, and Live Skull was also on Homestead. I think that’s how we knew about each other. Live Skull played in Boston a lot. Uzi lasted maybe two-and-a-half years. We broke up right before our EP came out, which was the story of my life at that point. Justin Burrill, my friend from the Wild Stares, that Propeller band, was opening up for Live Skull at a show. I was hanging out with them back stage, and Live Skull was there. I was already a huge Live Skull fan, and finally got to meet them. It turned out that they had been listening to the Uzi record and digging it. They made the connection that I was the person singing on the Uzi record, and we exchanged numbers. They said they were going through some changes, and they had decided that they wanted a lead singer. Up until that point, all of them were taking turns singing, and I guess none of them really wanted to sing. I think they felt that they would be a better band if they had a lead singer. They didn’t know that I played guitar at that point. I joined them as the lead singer. I was at loose ends after Uzi broke up.
Did you play any guitar with Live Skull or you were just the lead singer?
I was just the singer. I might have played guitar on one song towards the end—I played clarinet on one or two songs—but I was pretty much the lead singer. Mark C and Tom Paine had a strong bond, a special way of playing together, and they definitely didn’t need another guitar player.
What’s it like being on stage with out a guitar? Do you feel naked? What do you do with your hands?
It was really weird. In a way it is freeing, because you don’t have to stand in one place. You can take the microphone off the stand. You can walk around the stage. When you’re playing guitar and singing, if you have bad sound at the spot that you’re at, you’re stuck. You can’t leave that spot too much. But it was weird at first. I had to push myself to perform a little bit more because I didn’t have a guitar. You’re the front person. There was a bit of pressure, but I pulled it off ok.
Did you tour with those bands?
I toured with Live Skull. Uzi broke up before the record came out. I started doing music pretty young, and I was frustrated that the bands that I had been in all seemed to break up before the record came out. I never toured, and I really wanted to tour. I was excited about joining Live Skull, because I knew they went on the road and had a booking agency. We did one record together, Dusted, and that was on Homestead, and after that we switched to Caroline Records, which was a good move [Positraction was released on Caroline in 1989]. Homestead ended up going out of business and everyone that was still with that label got screwed. They couldn’t get their records. They couldn’t get their money. We got out just in time
What kind of touring did you do with Live Skull?
We toured a lot in Europe. We did as much in Europe as in the States, maybe even a little bit more. I did two, maybe three tours of Europe with them, and a couple of tours in the United States. We had a van, and we would go out on the road for really long periods of time. They had a booking agency over there, and I can’t remember who booked them in the States.
That was Western Europe, before the Berlin Wall came down.
I still have my passport with my stamp from the DDR [East Germany, or the Deutsche Demokratische Republik]. I went through Check Point Charlie with Live Skull on my first tour. You had to drive all the way through East Germany and it was very bizarre. You couldn’t get off the road. There were a few designated rest areas with gas stations, with very overpriced gas, and stuff like that, but you weren’t allowed to get off any exists. There was a special road that you had to stay on and you couldn’t get off that road.
After Live Skull, what was your next band, Come?
After Live Skull broke up, I took a little bit of time off. I had been in Boston, but when I joined Live Skull I moved to New York, and after Live Skull broke up, I moved back to Boston. I had met a couple of the guys in Come, and they were in Boston. Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine) was in Boston. We had played before I joined Live Skull, and we really hit it off. We had done a couple of things while I was in New York. I may have even called him when Live Skull broke up and told him that we were going to break up. It didn’t happen right away, but it so happened that one of the bands that Live Skull toured with was this band from Athens Georgia called the Bar-B-Q Killers. Arthur Johnson was the drummer in that band and he ended up in Boston, too. We started a band—Chris, Arthur, and another Georgia transplant who Arthur knew, Sean O’Brien, from his old band, Kilkenny Cats. We did the Single of the Month Club for Sub Pop (“Car,” released in 1991), but we were never actually signed to Sub Pop. Our first album, 11:11, was on Matador, and we were on Matador the whole time.
Matador Records was a new label at the time.
They were brand new. We weren’t the first band on Matador, but we were one of the first. At that point, he had just put out the Pavement record, and there were a few bands on Matador already like Railroad Jerk and Mecca Normal. I knew Gerard from Homestead, that was the connection, and I really liked him. He was from the Boston area originally, so I’ve known him since he was about 16.
Getting signed was different back then, too.
There was more money in the music industry then. I think there was even a bit of a bidding war on us. It was good. We got a nice advance. We were able to buy a van. We were on Matador in the States and we were on Beggars Banquet in Europe. It was two separate labels, and we got twice as much money. They were not together then—Beggars and Matador didn’t merge until many years after that—we had a manager at the time, Tom Johnston, who was helping us facilitate that, we weren’t doing it all ourselves.
Did you get a salary from the label? How did that work?
We didn’t get a salary. We got an advance. You could use the advance for recording and other stuff, but it was more than we needed for the recording. We also got tour support—a certain amount of tour support—we recorded for free, we had enough to buy a van to tour in, and we were able to get paid while we toured. It was a fair amount of money at that time. They had a promotional budget, and we made videos, too.
What’s the story behind that video for “Cimarron,” where you’re beating each other up?
That video was not one that Matador made. We were asked to participate on a benefit record, where all the proceeds went to a women’s health charity. They asked us to donate a song. The album was called, Ain’t Nothin’ But A She Thing, and it was this big MTV thing. They made the video and teamed us up with this woman, Sophie Tucker, she had worked with Jeff Buckley. She was British and they flew her over from England. They put us up in the Chelsea Hotel and we made this video to the song, which we donated to them. They did the compilation record and did an MTV special on it. That was produced by London Records—we didn’t have anything to do with that label—but we did have to sign something, we had to give them that song. I don’t know if at this point we’d have permission to reissue it. It was definitely an exclusive, it wasn’t an album track or anything like that.
What type of touring did you do?
We would headline. Sometimes we opened for different bands. We opened up for Nirvana for a leg of their In Utero tour. We played with Dinosaur Jr a lot, and Buffalo Tom and Sugar—Bob Mould’s band after Hüsker Dü—and in those cases, we’d open up for them, too. But for the most part we would do headlining tours of smallish-type clubs. We played a few festivals, too, but I think I played more festivals with my solo stuff than I did with Come.
How has touring changed, besides the obvious things like traveling with GPS and a cell phone?
Good question. I don’t know if it’s really changed all that much, though it’s definitely changed for me. I went from having a booking agent booking all my shows, to booking almost all of it myself. The last tour I did in Europe was in January 2019, and I booked a 26-show tour in Europe by myself. After years of working with different booking agents and it not working out, I had enough contacts on my own in different countries. I asked other musician friends who they were working with, and I developed a network that was big enough for me to do it myself. That’s definitely a change. Come had a booking agent, a tour manager, and traveled with a sound person, and/or a driver. That’s a luxury I can’t afford these days.
How do you book your tours, do you have a database and list of clubs?
Except in a few cases, I don’t contact the clubs directly. When I had a European booking agent, they wouldn’t call the clubs themselves, they had different promoters they would work with in different territories or different countries who would coordinate the whole thing. Through talking with a lot of people and different connections, I developed that, too.
Those promoters book all your shows in their territory. For example, if you do five shows in Spain, those are all booked by the same person?
More or less. There are certain places—just from doing it for some many years—I have personal relationships with the owner of the venue. They know me and I know them. We’re on a first name basis. I email them, ask for a show on a certain date, and they get back to me. But I don’t think I can book an entire tour just calling up clubs, because clubs come and go. What you really want is someone who does that, but is more of a promoter-type person. You do that and then give them a percentage, 10 or 15 percent of the money you make playing their territory.
Do you have people like that in the States as well?
No [laughs]. That’s a European-only thing. In the States I actually contact the clubs myself. There are some big booking agents in the States, but I don’t think they focus on one territory, they focus on bands. In Europe, it’s like that because there are different countries, different languages, and things like that. That’s just the way it works over there.
Have you booked other bands?
No. I’ve thought about it. I’ve spent so much time doing this I should be a booking agent, but then I think, “No, I shouldn’t [laughs].” There’s not a lot of money in it. You have to have a ton of bands who are playing all the time.
Nowadays, you’re signed to Thrill Jockey, both for your solo stuff and your band, E.
Thrill Jockey isn’t doing the new E record. They did our first two, but the band’s schedule is a bit more complicated than it had been a few years back. We’re putting it out on a Czech label called Silver Rocket, who are super cool people, and they also have a booking arm. We’ve worked with them before. It feels like these days, most distribution is done online—through Bandcamp or whatever—or through playing shows and selling your record at the merch table. I think we sell more records that way, then actually in record stores.
Why bother being on a label? Why not just post it in on Bandcamp yourself?
If you’re with a label like Thrill Jockey, it’s great. Bettina Richards (the label head) has people working there. There’s a publicist, a promoter, someone who does radio, sales, distribution in different territories, and they will get your records into the shops. The promotion and publicity is something the label really has to offer. Also, they are paying to make the record. They give you a budget to make the record, and they pay for the production and mastering.
Budgets are nothing like they were in the ‘90s though.
Oh God no.
How has streaming affected things?
Financially, streaming is definitely not a positive. The amount you get paid for having a song streamed is minuscule. It’s fractions of a cent. It’s difficult to make money from streaming. It is a good way to have your music heard though. It’s convenient for people. They say you make up for it in live sales because more people will hear your music and will then go see you play, but the fact of the matter is, people aren’t going out to see live music that much either.
Is attendance down in clubs as well?
Definitely. I think the jam music scene is packing people in. There are definitely bands that are doing well and selling lots of tickets, but in terms of smaller clubs, I don’t think they’re doing that well. I don’t know how in vogue guitar music is with the younger generation—or the generation that would be going out—that can either afford to go out or is old enough to go out, but not so old that they have kids or serious jobs.
Streaming isn’t like radio in that it doesn’t drive sales of physical records, because you already have instant access to the song you want.
No. But my stuff does sell, because I am a bit older. The record label told me that apparently I sell more physical product than bands that may be younger. There is a whole generation of people who do not buy music. Period. End of story. They have never bought music in their life. My fans are slightly older, so I do sell physical product.
Vinyl sells?
Thrill Jockey is a very vinyl-positive label. All the records I’ve done on Thrill Jockey are on vinyl and CD. The new E record is going to be on vinyl, but not CD. People do buy CDs, though not many people have CD players any more—I still do—but they’re not super popular. But I have a feeling they might come back…