Owen is Touring the UK and Europe in February, playing shows in Brighton, Southampton, London, Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester, Dublin etc. I wrote it in my own sub-par Gonzo style, including myself in the questions to try and help give a personal feel and a quick retrospective on his work
When I was performing stand up I was obsessed with American stand up comedians. Particularly lesser heard of names from the past like Emo Philips or Jack Benny. Your music is often compared to The Smiths or The Cure or Belle and Sebastian but are there less obvious British influences in your work? I could imagine you being a teenage record collector.
I’ve been a record collector since I was 13 or 14. Before that, it was baseball cards. I got into music through my parent’s record collection, in particular their 60’s rock, soul & folk records. I was always primarily interested in American music, but PJ Harvey’s first few albums had a big impact on me during my high school years. I saw the “Man-Size” video on MTV one night & I was immediately attracted to how raw & spare the music felt. The next day, I went to the record store & bought Rid of Me, & I was obsessed. My uncle gave me a cheap bass guitar for my next birthday, PJ Harvey’s songs were the first that I learned to play along with. I got into The Cure & The Smiths a few years later, after I met some cool goths at my university.
The name ‘Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’, when you were being listened to by a wider fanbase that must have felt like a joke taken out of context. I always felt like your songs are actually about the opposite of that, about someone who grew up very shy and then found that he had a girlfriend, a social circle, a band people liked and was learning to be happy at 24 instead of 14? Did the name feel like a stereotype by 2010?
Since I started writing songs in my late teens & early 20’s, I’ve been interested in writing sad ballads & torch songs, because that was always my favorite stuff to listen to. Although it obvioulsy speaks my own mental state, the “Painfully Alone” in the name was always meant to refer to my intended audience for the music. I wanted to make sympathetic songs for people in need of comfort. I still do. It was the Casiotone part of the name that I first outgrew, as I started to experiment with different kinds of instrumentation, but over time, I got more embarrassed about having to mumble “Casiotone for the Painfully Alone” whenever anyone asked what my band was called, & I started to regret not coming up with a more succinct, emotionally loaded, & non-rhyming band name.
With all of your albums with Casiotone and Advance Base, it feels like you have to impose arbitrary limits on your creativity (limiting chord structure, ‘abstractions’, dogs) but always come back to the same themes. Love, friendship, nature, drinking, troubled families – the gap between youth and wisdom. To write a song now that you’re married with a family, is it a painful process to go back to that headspace?
I think my songs keep returning to the same themes because those are just the things I tend to think about, or at least those are the feelings I feel the need to process through songwriting. Writing songs was more of a struggle when I was younger & still trying to figure out what I had to say. At this point in my life, writing & singing & playing is pure therapy for me. Most of the song ideas come from my subconscious, & I try to chase the ideas down as a means of understanding where the thoughts are coming from, to better know myself & other people who confuse me.
With your new album, ‘Animal Companionship’, do you think Dogs are an analogy for humans without intellect? They feel the same as us, you can see when they’re happy or sad and they become a part of the family. So at a time when America has lost trust with the political class, we wish we could be more like dogs – more playful and happy and living by less arbitrary rules?
I can’t claim any sort of political allegory within Animal Companionship. The pets in those songs represent steady, unshakable companionship in the forms of both unconditional love & what we humans might hope to find with other humans, & also the looming presence of depression & past trauma. That’s why I chose a black dog for the album cover.
You’re playing some dates in Europe in February, how have you adapted to touring over the years? It must have been a nightmare in 2005 – you don’t have a band to protect you or a back catalogue to dip into or a lead singer persona to fall back on. When I performed stand up I would suffer terribly from stage fright, and would often go onstage feeling like I had completely lost my sense of humour but a lot of the time those gigs would go better than any others. Now you’re able to support some great bands in America and play to an excited crowd in Europe it must be an enjoyable process but how have you found the journey?
I love to play shows & I like being in different cities & meeting new people, but travel & accommodation logistics give me a lot of anxiety. I especially hate flying. If I could beam from myself from my house to a different city & venue every day, & then return my own bed every night, touring would be perfect. But, I’ll fly wherever & sleep wherever I need to in order to be on stage & play my songs for a room full of people. It’s my meditation.
