DM Stith Interview: SXSW 2010

DM Stith is a Bloomington, Indiana and Brooklyn, New York-based singer, guitarist and pianist whose music draws great influence from the industrial sounds of Nine Inch Nails and the Christian music he grew up around. Stith has toured Europe and the United States to promote his new album, 'Heavy Ghost.' As he prepares for a second SXSW appearance, Stith speaks candidly with Spinner about his creative beginnings, Austin's Land of Toys and how bloody piano keys can enhance a performance.

Please describe your sound in your own words.

Gosh. I hate that question. [laughter] The recordings sound like Garfunkel being produced by Trent Reznor as accompanied by much alcohol and a boys' choir. How's that?

Wow! [laughter] That's a great answer.

I don't know. It sounds like folk music. There's a lot of attempts at interesting and intricate percussion that I think comes from listening to industrial music and electronic music. And, the voice is very achy, pretty, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Garfunkel. And the songs are just my eccentricity. It's just bad songwriting that's accompanied by fake high production. [laughter] Shoot myself in the foot there.

I think that's a very sound, astute and thoughtful observation of your music. Coming from a family of musicians and music educators, where did you get started making your own music?

I think I started by ridiculing my parents for the music they listened to back when I was little. My whole family was really musical, and that manifested itself in public performances. Both of my sisters were in musicals and in opera. My dad was a band director and my mom was a pianist. The fruit of all that musical energy in the family always manifested itself as a performance. And, because I was shy, I refused performing. So, therefore I had kind of cut myself off from identifying myself as a musician, because that's the only way I had seen it, as a performance-based thing. But I always cared very much about sound. I love music. I was really protective of my taste of it, but because I was not performing it, I didn't think my taste mattered.

I was such a jerk as a kid. I would kind of sabotage my family's rehearsal times by pretending that I was going to be part of the group. We would get together. We would rehearse and I would purposely sing everything up a half-step. Which I guess is hard to do, but it was easy for me as a kid to harmonize the ugliest harmonies possibly and make my family laugh. A lot of it is kind of a cynical response to the Christian music my parents were listening to and the soft, classical stuff my sisters were having to perform. I think that's the seed from which I grew as a musician--kind of a cynical response to music that takes itself pretty seriously.

I bought a guitar when I was in high school, just an acoustic thing, and took lessons for 6 months before I quit. I always played it. It was something I did when I needed to relax. But I never recorded myself until 5 years ago. I moved to Brooklyn and I just kind of fell into the company of Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Sufjan Stevens, who is on the same label that I'm on [Asthmatic Kitty Records]. All these people who were kind of coming from the same background as I was and kind of worked out a way to accept the music that they grew up on and move forward and create an acceptance of it. Does that make any sense?

That makes a whole lot of sense. It makes a ton of sense. It actually segues into another question that I want to ask, because a lot of musicians tell me that they are directly influenced by the music that they grew up listening to. In your case, your music seems to be, to an extent, a resistance to the music you grew up listening to. What are your musical influences?

I am definitely influenced by the church cantatas, the Easter cantatas and things that I thought were just ridiculous when I was growing up. There's a drama. There's a kind of ecclesiastical spark to the music that I do. It's all about this longing and glory, even if it's painted in a very cynical, dark way. It's still there. I think that just has to do with not having grown up in the rock world at all. There wasn't a single rock record in my sisters' or my parents' collection. I didn't know what the Beatles sounded like until I was in high school. I don't know if I have ever heard a Rolling Stones record. Whereas other kids that I know grew up on that stuff. For me, I don't have a sentimental attachment to rock at all. I have a sentimental attachment to church choirs rehearsing, and orchestras rehearsing, and the warmth of a big auditorium. That's where my comfort is, so I think that I go back to that kind of choral music and orchestral stuff. Even folk music, we never played any folk music besides hymns.

I think my influences at the very root are those, and just about that is stuff like Nine Inch Nails and Pigface and all this kind of crass, industrial stuff that I listened to through middle school.

It's funny that you mentioned both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in your response. One of my questions is just this: "Beatles or Stones?" But, you've actually not heard much Rolling Stones and didn't grow up influenced by the Beatles.

I love the Beatles. I love them. They're in my top 10 most important musical experiences. I love them very much, especially the kind of trippy, otherworldly stuff--you know, A Day in the Life, all the Sgt. Pepper stuff, Magical Mystery Tour. The Rolling Stones, I've never really connected with.

I guess we score that one for the Beatles. [laughter]

[laughter] Yeah...yeah. Give them my vote.

Your real name is DM Stith. Should I ask how you came up with your artist name?

Well, I can tell you a story about that if you want.

Please. Whatever you want to share. I'm down to hear it.

Sure. Well, my first name is David. My middle name is Michael. Before I was a musician back in 2003 or 2004, I was working and wanted to make a website just where I could keep a blog. At this point, Blogger wasn't around. At least it wasn't anything that people were doing. DavidStith.com was taken. There's a graphic designer named David Stith and it looks just like me! This is when I was in college. I was a designer in college. I went to DavidStith.com and there was a drawing of a boy, man with blond hair, large blue eyes. It was done with crayon and it was written in kind of childish writing, "David Stith eats children." [laughter] Because all my friends in college were designers I thought that was a joke, like it was a setup, because it looked like me. I couldn't take DavidStith.com because that was already taken. DM Stith was free and I thought that was typographically interesting-looking and memorable for me. So, that's how it got started. I had a website called DMStith.com and then when I started submitting music it was just easier for me to call myself DM Stith. It's also what I was able to get a MySpace page under DM Stith on MySpace, because David Stith was taken in MySpace. So, it was really dictated by those two things.

I was ready to come away with nothing for that question, and that's plenty! While you were in college you tried your hand at a novel and a children's book. Now you tell me that you started blogging before you began sharing your music. How does literature affect your music?

Oh, my gosh! Literature?! It's huge! I feel like I'm a failed writer in some ways. I wish I could write better than I can. I really struggle with it. All through high school and middle school I wouldn't take notes in class. Instead, I found one of those 3-inch 3-ring binders, and it had probably 2 full reams of college-ruled notebook paper. Both front and back of every page was poetry that I would write during classes in high school. The first grown-up art move that I had taken was that I was the editor-in-chief of a few literary magazines in college and in high-school and after college, just trying to get poetry published. Music for me is more impulsive. It's a muscular activity. When you're singing it feels good. And, that feeling has been important for me to investigate some of my physical memories of the world. Writing has always been more important for exploring more contemplative, linguistic memories of the world. Music is a place where those two things come together.

Do characters and literary themes from your own work make their way into your music and vice versa?

I mostly write about myself. It's mostly impressionistic memoir when I write. What I wrote in college was kind of like three novels in one. I find that I don't attach myself to narrative at all in any of my work. In design work, literature, visual art, music, narrative is the last thing that's important to me. So, there's not characters, per se, except me and maybe the other. When I was writing lyrics for 'Heavy Ghost' I had pieces of paper all over the wall of my studio. Whenever I had any little sliver of memory I would write it up on the wall. When I was working on lyrics, I would start singing whatever, and look around and sing whatever my eye attached itself to on the wall. That was how I was able to cram my literary content into my music.

Is this going to be your first time at SXSW?

No. I went last year, actually. That was my first time.

Did you perform last year?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

How is SXSW 2010 going to be different for you?

Well, last year sucked! [laughter] This one is going to be great! My music is relatively quiet, at least compared to 90% of the indie acts at SXSW. It's a necessary venue, but it works best for bands that make a lot of noise who can kind of cancel out the sound of people talking, and dropping beer glasses, and other bands playing, and people getting in fights, and throwing up and stuff. My music doesn't contend with those sorts of sounds. Last year I played at a venue right in the center of all that stuff. The sound was terrible. It was like the third or fourth time that I had ever performed live, and I was with a band that I hadn't gotten to rehearse with much. It was just the worst possible place for me to perform. This year, rather than trying to make a rock band out of what I do, I'm playing in church, which is actually built for performances. It'll be an acoustic space, which actually will improve the sound. It's in a church. I grew up in churches, so I'll be comfortable. And, I'll have a string quartet and a grand piano. So, it's just night and day for me. And I've had a year's worth of performing under my belt.

Why is SXSW necessary? Why do you choose it as an arena to display your talent?

I just think right now it's necessary for the industry. It's important for artists to perform and see other people perform. I think it's a way to feel the size of the space you're a part of, and to make connections. It's a business thing. It's an industry thing.

What's in your SXSW festival survival kit?

One great thing is to have a really good friend down there to stay with. So, I have somebody to spend my days with down there. So, that's helpful. I think that's the main thing. [laughter] Make a good friend in Austin and stay in their house and make breakfast with them in the morning. Otherwise, I feel like if you don't have friends there and spend your days wandering around, it could be pretty soulless. Being there reminded me of that scene in Pinocchio where he shows up on that island and all the kids are being turned into donkeys. It's kind of like that. A lot of it is kids with attitude run amok and given all sorts of freedom to be as cool as they think they can be.

I just remember taking a walk on the main strip looking for food at like 1 in the morning. There were three guys in front of us. The guy on the right, who was right in front of me, threw up 4 times as he was walking. As he was walking!

He didn't break stride?

No! He just kind of leaned over to the right and let it go. Oh, man. At that point I wasn't fazed by it. I remember it with more horror than I experienced when I was in the situation. I was so numb at that point.

That might answer another question.

I can't imagine. What question would that be?

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

Oh. I have another good story. I was in Rome over the summer on my first European tour. It was a full moon. Rome is a really cool city, but it's really crazy. It's kind of the embodiment of Chaos Theory. It's just a big, gnarly place. I play both piano and acoustic guitar when I perform. I was playing the song "Morning Glory Cloud," which halfway through I switch to guitar from piano. And, then I go right into this song "Braid of Voices," which is all piano and very kind of epic and slow and grand. So, in the middle of "Morning Glory Cloud" I have 8 bars or something to take my guitar off and run to the piano. And, I did it! So, it's fine, but I whacked my head with my guitar as I was taking it off. And, it hurt, but not bad. And, I got over to the piano that I usually play with my eyes closed. So, I ended the song and went right into the next one. At some point I opened my eyes and I noticed my face was all wet. I was really sweaty. So, I wiped the sweat off and I kept playing and closed my eyes and opened my eyes again halfway through the song and realized all the keys I'd touched had turned red. [laughter] Because when I took off the guitar I had cut about an inch right under my eyebrow. And, the blood was just pouring down my face onto the keys. Luckily, that was the last song. I'd finished the song and bowed and got off stage. So, people were screaming and excited. [laughter] It was my right eye--the side of the stage that was facing the audience. I got off stage. The string players were horrified because it looked a lot worse than it was. They were cleaning me up. People outside are cheering and screaming and calling for an encore, chanting my name. I go back out and I've got a tissue over my eye, and I say, "I need five minutes, but I'll come back out." So, that's that. That was it. That was my rock star moment.

What is your musical guilty pleasure?

I used to like Enya quite a bit. I would switch from Nine Inch Nails to Enya in middle school. She occupies this kind of dangerous land between classical music and pop music. For whatever reason, I'm pretty comfortable with her there. Most other musicians like that kind of really gross me out. Enya's always been okay to me. Also, I have The Muppet Movie on LP, the soundtrack. It's pretty amazing.

What's your biggest vice?

I like food a whole lot. My vice is that I eat when I'm full. I'm sure there are others, but I don't want to talk about the others.

Who is your first celebrity crush?

What?! I don't know, man. First celebrity crush... I had a thing for... Oh, man. I can't-- What?! I can't do this.

You don't have to.

No, I want to answer that. I had a thing for two people when I was in middle school. One was Christina Ricci and one was Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I. Those two.


Denzil Coleman is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.