We sat down this week for a very special interview with the venerable Lance Higdon - who has been a creative fixture in the local music scene for some time. Higdon is about to leave Houston and everything that makes it fantastic for the questionably friendly confines of Atlanta, Georgia. Lance has been involved in an abundance of music projects over the past five years, so we wanted to have a special installment of our series - perhaps we should call it "Get To Know A Houston Man" this time. Welcome to part one, where Lance takes us through his various aural outlets. You can listen to the full audio version in these three posts.

H-Town Rock: You seem to be a man possessed with the creative spirit. We came up with about six projects that we can confirm, a couple others, and one that we know hasn't performed yet. So let's run through everything you've done: Tambersauro, Golden Cities, Lance & The Pants, [we] once saw you perform as Jah Rühl, Narreme [nay-reem], and you have a noise project with Richard Ramirez coming up called Oltre La Morte. Oh, and Wall With One Side. [We] do believe we found one online that bills you as Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste, with you going by St. Athanasius?
Lance Higdon: It's possible.

HTR: What haven't we covered?
LH: The only other thing, I think, is a duo with a piano player called Robert Pearson, and that's unimaginatively titled the Higdon-Pearson Duo. It's real frenetic, he plays electric piano and plays like 128th notes.

HTR: So he's just shredding through the piano.
LH: Yeah, so I just try to fit in around that. It's really promising, we're going to try to record that. But you forgot my most serious project, Whatabreaker, which is my Jawbreaker cover band with Peter Lee and Casey Power. I think that's everything that officially exists. There are more things that exist theoretically. I have an electronic beat thing called Holy Ghost Machine Gun.

HTR: What about Gray Tapes, that's you, right? Not the notorious gray tapes, but there's one that popped up recently.
LH: No comment.
HTR: You won't admit to having anything to do with a certain B L A C K I E remix?
LH: No comment.

HTR: You described a few of these, let's go through the others. Wall With One Side - you refer to what you're doing as Maximalist Powerdrone. That's a new term, I believe. What does that sound like to someone?
LH: The goal is to stake out a space between really beautiful music and really noisy music. It's pretty simple - a bunch of really slow delivery chord progressions run through a couple different resonators, that are all being manipulated slowly so the sound is constantly changing. Think of it as a really slow moving oil slick or something. [Too soon?] It's drone music in that sense that it's kind of transporting and meditative. The goal is to always be doing something - it gives your ear something to follow. I called it powerdrone because it's more than your average drone. It's kind of silly, but it's good to have humor - it helps people not be intimidated.

HTR: This project with Richard Ramirez - what are you aiming for?
LH: I've wanted to work with him for a long time - I met him at the Nameless Sound 60 minutes of minutes show, in 2003 or 2004. He's a super nice guy, really down to earth. We both really like zombies, I think that's apparent. The name Oltre La Morte is the Italian title of Zombi 4 - these movies have these really visceral quality: drills through the eye, & whatnot. That's the aesthetic meeting point for us - a little campy, a little over the top. Him and I come together over mutual love of extreme sonic environments; we're both playing amplified pieces of metal.

HTR: Lance & The Pants - let's go through that one.
LH: I made friends in the past couple years with a lot of people in the improvised music community in Houston. I think it's really vital - those people listen to everything: they go see Little Joe, indie rock shows, & they do their own thing. I met Sandy Ewen, Ryan Edwards & Doug Falk; they were throwing around the idea of doing an improv quartet and they were like: "How can we get him to play? We've got to put his name in the title." I got an email from Doug, and I thought, "that's hilarious, why wouldn't I want to do that?"

HTR: Jah Rühl, which we witnessed, was you, Scott, & Marcus Gausepohl. Was there more than one performance of that?
LH: There's been at least three, maybe four. It still exists in theory. Continuing with the meme of stupid funny names, that band was thrown together because Marcus booked a show. I think it was the first time I played on the grounds of the Mekong Center. [Ed. Note: we're at Khon's, in the center] Marcus wanted to play bass & have something more in the vein of kraut-rock & dub. It's our attempt to do some more groove-based music. The Jah was supposed to be the dub thing, and the Rühl was the kraut-rock.

HTR: How about Narreme? I saw you perform as this duo with James Templeton [of LIMB] at SXSW.
LH: I saw [James & B L A C K I E] doing a show together a couple years ago, and thought it was really rad. I kept in touch with James, and we did some things together - I had just gotten Abelton Live, and we were working with that.

HTR: Golden Cities? I know Marcus is in that, and Meghan [Hendley] was in it for a bit.
LH: Golden Cities started in 2007. I had just finished my first year of teaching; I was living in Cypress. That summer I had a whole bunch of time, and [Marcus & I] started writing something with Nathan Heskia - who has since moved on to Boston and is doing things under the name Great Hopes. We rented a room at the Rhythm Room, and we just jammed every day for hours. We cobbled together enough stuff to make a record, so we went in with Jeff Price and cut the record in a day. Nathan moved... and we started playing with Brian Smith. He restored the pretty - because Marcus just wants to be really brutal and I just want to play hip-hop beats. He brings the twinkle. We're about to go in and record at Sugar Hill.

HTR: Ok, Tambersauro.
LH: Tambersauro is my longest lived project; it's always been at the center and everything else has kind of grown out of that. It's based around a longstanding musical relationship I've had with Jeff Price; we've been playing together since I was 19, in my first band MiracleVersusMan. When that band didn't work out we started Tambersauro with Mike.

HTR: You just released a record, right? And you're about to play a show.
LH: Yeah, we're going to have "one last show" - question mark. It seems like breakups are never permanent these days. We're all about radical juxtaposition - always these polarities of real complex math & prog influenced music and then this melancholy, shoegaze, 90s emo. There's a lot of things we try to pack in around the sides - Latin rhythms, funk... I'm really proud of what it's been. It's the closest to my heart, out of everything I've done.

HTR: We keep mentioning your impending move - you're leaving us for Atlanta. What's your move date?
LH: July 31st.
HTR: You have the "final" Tambersauro show, what day is that?
LH: July 24th.
HTR: And you have the noise show coming up on July 3rd. That's going to be a really interesting show because of its location.
LH: Yeah, the noise show's going to be in the Midtown Doctors Group - which is quite literally just an unused doctor's office in the Mekong Center...
HTR: And there's no power...
LH: There is no power. We'll be running extension chords from Khon's into the Doctors Group for the bands. It'll be interesting because everyone will be in their own little waiting room. So we may have some battery powered lamps, but in all seriousness we're asking people to bring their own flashlights.
HTR: It ought to be an extremely interesting setting for a noise show. We already picturing it in 50's black and white horror film style.
LH: Well, in keeping with the theme, Oltre La Morte will have a film playing of all the most over the top, splattering, drill in the eyeball, eating intestines zombie scenes from all the greats. That's been cut by Jonathan Jindra of Binary Productions/Trills.

All photos courtesy of Lance Higdon.

Filed in Arts & Events and tagged 40 holy martyrs of sebaste, b l a c k i e, binary productions, doug falk, get to know a houston band, golden cities, gray tapes, great hopes, higdon-pearson duo, holy ghost machine gun, houston bands, houston music, interviews, jah rühl, james templeton, jeff price, jonathan jindra, khon's, lance & the pants, lance higdon, limb, narreme, nathan heskia, oltre la morte, peter lee, richard ramirez, robert pearson, st. athanasius, tambersauro, trills, wall with one side, whatabreaker

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