Escape From Escondido - Moses Constable of Moans

After a full day of teaching, I'm sitting at Rosie O'Grady's, listening to Wili Fleming of Fresh Veggies do his first solo set. His stage banter is describing different types of tunings to the two bartenders and five people downing whiskeys and beers at the bar. Every time he says he's tuned the strings to his two dads, “DAD DAD” or says “DAD DAE” with a lisp, the bartenders crack up.

I watch “Always On My Mind” on my silenced phone as Wili plays what might be Irish standards in different tunings. The Moans video has the aesthetic of Zardoz and an off brand X-men, set in a parallel universe of a bizarre spaghetti western. Coupled with Wili's music, it makes for a postmodern hodgepodge. The video consists of band members chasing each other through the desert for several minutes before a young Asian man wakes up to both his mother and the cliché, It was all just a dream. After the video, a drink, and a few more songs, I leave the bar to check out one of the rare Nexus 4000 shows at The Whistlestop. My preparation for interviewing Moses is haphazard at best. I've listened to a couple preliminary recordings off the upcoming record that James Page has sent me and I've seen them impress a happily dancing audience at Soda Bar.

Most of my initial interest in the Moans project stems from the addition of Alex Bravo, aka Shrub, aka Shrubravo, aka Bolt Macchiato, on bass. A graduate of UCSC music school, Alex is a unique artist, with a ledger that includes his two excellent avante pop bedroom albums Approachable and Too Approachable. The albums could be placed somewhere between Ariel Pink, a heartfelt teenage diary, and Flight of the Conchords. Moans however, is the baby of Moses Constable.

From behind, Moses looks like a very large woman. From the front, he looks like a mustached gentleman with a disarming smile and a charming gap between his two front teeth. Perhaps he could have pursued a parallel life as a shampoo model with his well attended long brown hair. On stage, he comes across as the spiritual son of Parliament. He's a musician to whom the attitude and visual aesthetic carries equal weight to the music he's making.

Moses meets me at noon, right as The Merrow opens. Somehow, there are already two grizzled old men sitting at the bar, working on what appears to be their second drinks. The Merrow is always dark, and for those of us that spent years playing The Ruby Room, it holds a bittersweet nostalgic quality. We grab beers.

“I don't want you to use their names,” he says.

We had already had a few conversations regarding this article. I wanted to know a good angle for communicating some aspect of both his and Moans' stories. He had briefly laid out the genesis of Moans with a situation that went something like this :

Moses meets Music Bro when they're both in high school.
Moses joins band with Music Bro when he's 19. A jam band named The Music Bro Project.
Music Bro has a beautiful and interesting girlfriend named Two X.
Like most musicians, Music Bro is moderately delusional and narcissistic.
At the age of 23, Moses bonds with Two X over their mutual dislike of Music Bro. (Mutual dislike is the glue of modern relationships.)
At the age of 24, Moses and Two X run off together, causing the audience he had developed with Music Bro to abandon him. Moses experiences both self and social alienation in the name of love.
Moses escapes Escondido and the tribe of Music Bro, and goes into musical hiding in San Diego for seven years, incubating his brainchild, Moans with “Bad recordings and bad decisions.”

I jokingly told him the article was going to be a hit piece in which I make him out to be the guy who's going to try and get with your girlfriend. At first he laughed, but apparently if you repeat something enough times, people start believing you. The reality is that if you exist in a community of people long enough, things happen.

Relationships develop, they collapse, they develop again, they collapse again. When that late night community of people exists in bars, venues, and parties, there are plenty of opportunities for wide varieties of our higher and lesser selves acting out. Merging and disintegrating groups of people collide into primordial soups of evolving social situations. Small grudges have the potential to manifest into multi year feuds and a bad breakup can cause your audience of friends to disappear straight back into the boozy fog they apparated from to begin with.

Still, it's good practice to remain intellectually aloof about these sorts of things. Life is hard enough as it is without taking on the responsibility of being judge, jury, and executioner of your social circles. It is an unfortunate reality though, that pissing people off affects our capacities—to book shows, to have draws, to promote albums, to play certain venues—but that's life. A series of doors open and close with every decision. It's Choose Your Own Adventure™ reality style.

According to Moses, Moans has its origins in two situations. Firstly, it is a sexual reference that derived its name from selections in the Prince autobiography. Secondly, Moses was inspired in the shower by his shower head with the brand name Moen. Ironically, Moen is generally known for their faucet heads, not their shower heads. Divine providence. A funk band is born.

James Page at Emerald Age Recording has been working on mixing and recording their debut album. He's been sending me preliminary mixes of their tracks. I tell Moses I want to focus on the upcoming song “At It Again,” off the tentatively titled album, Luxury. Moses tells me to focus on a different track, “Never Would I,” and I tell him I've already written a synopsis of “At It Again.”

“At It Again” begins with a tasteful rhythm guitar and drum duo before the entrance of a synth lead and bass. Moses comes in on talk box and does a call and response with the soulful singing of Michael Lakis. While repetitions are frequent, they are often accompanied by slight changes in layers that defeat what could become monotonous in less conscious hands. These changes are achieved while remaining musically light footed.

Despite having eight members, Moans manages to operate in a territory that does not venture into an overabundant maximalism. The entrance of hits are used to create space and ultimately trigger an ending that is a recapitulation of the initial progression, before returning to another iteration of those hits to end the piece. The long repetitions of the first two thirds of the song allow for the hits to stand out, and the compositional patience allows for what could be typical to become unique.

“Never Would I” begins as a talk box ballad with another tasteful guitar line by Phil Macnitt. It's an almost six minute song comprised of a two chord progression within which Bolt keeps his bass line tight with Phil, and Mike Martinez. Their patience allows the gang vocals to shine through. Much like “At It Again,” there's a repetitive nature to the music that accompanies a shifting throughout the duration of the piece. And that repetitiveness once again allows for moments that can't be created in music that is less patient.

NOTE: Beyond these two songs, Moses has music videos online of earlier incarnations of Moans, which the reader can find links to at the bottom.

Moses is sitting in my living room, introducing himself to the good cat, Marcus Aurelius. Moses seems perturbed by my lack of socks, and eyes my toes with moderate disgust. I ignore him, and we begin talking.

Minutes 8:15 – 12

Moses

… I was showing my friends the recordings, and they were like “This song's still fucking going on?”

Marcus

Meow.

Mat

You have eight members and it's easy if you have eight options for doing shit for everyone to always be doing shit. So it was interesting that you guys don't get into maximalism while having so many members. Then again, when I saw Parliament, it was a similar situation. They have a ton of members on stage and it still manages to have space.

Moses

Yeah, space is really big to me, and minimalistic stuff.

Mat

Minimalistic stuff.

Moses

Well I was listening to Sheila E the drummer, and she was saying that space is the most important thing in pop music. If you don't have space you're doing too much. I don't think about that while I'm writing, but I don't know. Never Would I is what Shrub wrote, and it's also two chords.

Mat

I just remember one of the last things Shrub brought to Latifahtron a few years back was this like, ridiculous chord progression. It was like... a 25 chord progression. With like, a weird melody.

Moses

Yeah, he says he's writing something like that for us now. It won't be like Latifahtron style, but…

Mat

Well, Latifahtron was an argument. That's really what that music was. That was hard. Can we just make this interview about the cat? The last practice I was around the guitarist of Latifahtron he started shouting fuck you at me. It was one of those. Which actually happened with a guitarist the last time I was in a band with your drummer Mike Martinez, haha. It's good stuff.

Moses

I haven't had that happen yet.

Mat

Oh it's fun.

Moses

Well I'm looking forward to that.

Marcus moves over towards Moses and starts rubbing on his leg and jumps on his lap.

Mat

Marcus, you're dead to me. Stop cheating on me buddy.

Minutes 14 – 15:30

Mat

So are you trying to run Moans democratically?

Moses

Yeah, but when I want to run it democratically everyone wants to ask me shit. Like people wanted to talk about stage positions and I feel like a restaurant manager. I just want to be like “Leave me alone! I got my own shit to put together.”

Mat

Your live stage show is a whole thing.

Moses

That was the biggest point in what I wanted to do. But now I'm like let's not play shows so we can get some songs together. It's hard to get eight people together on a regular basis. We get together just enough to put together our set. So we have some songs waiting in the rafters waiting to get played.

Minutes 16:30 – 17:30

Moses

At It Again was the first song we all wrote together, but then when we recorded it there's something about Never Would I that I like a lot more.

Mat

It features you more?

Moses

Noooo…

Mat

It's fine.

Moses

I still wrote those stupid lyrics they sing in the other one.

Minutes 19 – 20:30

Mat

So as far as the whole Escondido thing, it's pretty short. I was just messing with you.

Moses

Right.

Mat

But it is mentioned.

Moses

That's fine.

Mat

I'm calling “_________” Music Bro.

Moses

Music bro! The other day I went to Live Wire and there was one of his crew there mad dogging me.

Mat

Really? Even now?

Moses

Yeah, he has really loyal idiot guys that hang out with him.

Mat

So you meet Music Bro in high school. When do you join a band with him?

Moses

I was probably like, nineteen or twenty. I had to prove myself to them.

Mat

Ha!

Moses

They wouldn't talk to me. So I just showed up with a bass to one of their jams... That was the coolest thing about them. I learned how to play bass really quickly by hanging out with them. I loved the Escondido jams and how people were always getting together to do that but it all turned super strange…

Minutes 22:30 – 28

Moses

So after I got to San Diego I started releasing music without any musicians, without any money, and I always had other people doing it for me too. I was like, “I don't need to learn how to use any programs! I've got friends.”

I didn't really have too many people helping me. Phil was there, but he was really busy with work and not with music. Phil left Escondido with me and lost all his music friends too.

Mat

Oh okay, so you had like, one loyal friend.

Moses

Well, there were more loyal friends, but he was musically the most loyal.

Mat

So how long was it before you started playing music again in public? When you were 24 you stopped playing music out right? And now you're 32. So six, seven years?

Moses

Basically, yeah. I was in a bunch of one off bands, but nothing worth mentioning. Moans was the ultimate goal... I just had to, I guess.

In my head, in my mind. I feel like I was, I don't want to say I was never too good at anything else, but it's something I've always set in my head as something I have to do and has to be done at some point... I don't know... I would do karaoke a lot to get out what I wanted to do on stage.

Mat

So you would do karaoke as practice runs for your shows?

Moses

Basically. I'd go to Sunday night karaoke at what's now Space Bar and that's where I learned my mic tricks.

Mat

You have mic tricks?

Moses

Yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen my microphone but it's pretty fucked up. But it was a way to get it out that wasn't performing. Then I'd go to friends shows and say, (raspberry sound) I don't want to do that. They're fucking lame.

Anastasya

Quick question, do we have any garlic left?

Mat

No.

Minutes 29 - 37

Mat

How much do you consider the audience when you write music? Or when you do shows?

Moses

A lot when we do shows. It sounds dumb, but I want people to feel cool when they listen to my music.

Mat

That's valid.

Moses

I feel like that was my first intro to music. When I was like five years old I'd listen to New Kids On The Block and they'd make me feel cool. I'd pop in the tape and like, be going to kindergarten and turning up the music as I approached the school to feel even cooler. That was like music to me; to feel cool.

Mat

My little brother, when he was like four years old, was obsessed with James Brown and had one James Brown album. Then he heard about Eminem when he was like five or six, and so my mom who's super Japanese had no idea what he was saying ended up buying me The Eminem Show to give to my brother. So he was listening to “Superman” when he was like, six.

Moses

Yeah, I wasn't too far from that, I had like, Doggy Style, the CD. I was like six or seven, and even that is the same thing. I didn't know what I was doing, but I remember feeling cool. I remember listening to like Tupac, or Notorious BIG, and when that whole thing happened. I remember when they died. It was all from older brothers and cousins...

And then it was more like Michael Jackson and Billy Jean. We're starting to think about adding more banter and sketches to the show, and so from that perspective I think about the audience a lot. I want the audience to be really entertained. Musically, I'm trying to make music that makes people feel good.

Mat

That's interesting. I deal with a lot of professional musicians and there's a lot of solipsism. There's a tendency to think about ourselves a lot of the time. There's a contempt for the audience. There's this idea of “Why the fuck should we change what we're doing to accommodate you dumb motherfuckers...”

Moses

Yeah, I understand that.

Mat

Whereas you're approaching it from more of a like “I like people, and I want people to like what I'm doing.” So you have a lot less ego involved.

Moses

In that sense, yeah. I've written a lot of shit where I'm like, “I don't know who the fuck is going to listen to this.” But now I want to make something that people gravitate towards.

Mat

That makes sense. It comes across in how people respond to it.

Moses

I've been very surprised by it. Olivia knows a lot of our lyrics now.

Mat

Who's Olivia?

Moses

The girl who threw that party.

Mat

Oh! I really don't like her outlet situation. So f her.

Moses

That's how I judge people too. Their outlet situation.

Mat

So Moans really is a project for people.

Moses

Yeah, I want people to party. We're like the condoners of good times.

Mat

Well, people like to feel good.

Moses

I guess that's what I want to do. I don't care about people but I want them to feel good.

Mat

That means you care about people, right?

Moses

Not individuals.

Moses & Mat

(laughs)

Moses

Groups.

To write happy music after going through the grinder is a feat. And Moans has very happy music. They are a movable feast of dance parties, tight grooves, and good times. Watch for the release of their upcoming album Luxury, as well as a music video for the song “At It Again.”