Would You Like To Know More?
Jeff Tobias:
The Strategy of Tension Interview
published 22 December 2022
photo: Dominick Mastrangelo
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Joe Sidney: You put out more albums this year than any other whites, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Why do you think certain whites treated their fans to more than one record this year? And why did you?
Jeff Tobias: What?
Joe Sidney: All these reviews are saying you’re a well-known “band guy” but I think you
also have a lot of solo material. Is there a thread in your solo work between
Some [2016] to
Completely Phantom [2018] to
Recurring Dream [2022] and
Just How I Feel [2022]? Are there threads in here that skip when you use your name and when you don't?
Jeff Tobias: What?
Joe Sidney: I wanna know how I get to all these places.
Jeff Tobias: …how you get to all these places…?
Joe Sidney: Yeah. They're all Jeff Tobias places, but how do I get there? Like, can you take me through what they have in common, what they don't have in common, and why they're being released under your name?
Jeff Tobias: Yes. So
Some came about because the label Soap Library asked me to release a recording with them. And I was studying composition at Brooklyn College at the time. It was me saying, ‘okay, I went to school to study composition. That means I'm a composer.’ Here are some [compositions] I wrote.
Joe Sidney: Oh,
“Some” - I get it.
Jeff Tobias:
Completely Phantom was a document of a moment in my life couple years later where I was busking a lot. I was riding my bike with my saxophone on my back, stopping at tunnels and recording myself, playing by myself. I thought that they were really good compliments of one another because one was the side of composition and the other was total freeform, a solo instrumental kind of work. And I think that
Recurring Dream and
Just What I Feel, there's a certain amount of that same dichotomy at work there. I really like to do composition work where I've worked really hard to make sure that everything is as close to how I want it to be as possible. But then I also like doing recordings where I'm just sitting down with one instrument, usually a saxophone, and sort of making a bunch of choices on the fly. With a pretty minimal amount of post-production. The most important choices are being made on the fly.
Joe Sidney: I think you had a huge year. Even though I talked to you day-to-day, I wanted to look at it as the breadth of a year that had firsts in podcast work [“
Milky Way Underground”] and also theater.
Jeff Tobias: Yeah,
Heavy Sleeper. I’d worked with Ryan Downey before we wrote a play. He co-wrote a play with Theresa Buchheister and Scott Ries. They have a collective called
Title:Point, and they asked me to do the music for a show that they wrote called
Never Odd or Even, and that would've been like 2014-2015. I wrote all the music for that. So that was my first collaboration with Ryan in theater, seven or eight years ago. But this time I acted in a play and wrote dialogue for theater.
Joe Sidney: That's a first.
Jeff Tobias: I wrote my own monologue, and I also contributed some other text for the play itself. Ryan did most of the work in terms of writing the dialogue for other people, staging it, directing it because he's got an incredible amount of experience with that. And he did a really wonderful job with it. But this was my first time acting in what I would consider to be a real theater production.
Joe Sidney: So I’m nominating you for having the “Year of the Year.”
[laughs] “Best Year of the Year.” But my next question is about you being drunk at Roulette
[misprounounced ‘Roulé’] this past September, claiming you have big plans for 2023.
Jeff Tobias: Yeah.
Joe Sidney: That's my question.
Jeff Tobias: Oh.
Joe Sidney: What are some of the things happening in 2023? I want you to talk about that. Are there any things that you did this year that you're gonna lean into again in 2023?
Jeff Tobias: Great question.
Joe Sidney: Yeah.
Jeff Tobias: I know. First of all, it's called Roulette.
Joe Sidney: What did I say? The two T’s means it's silent, like creme brulee.
Jeff Tobias: Uh.
Joe Sidney: They sent me mail yesterday.
Jeff Tobias: I can tell you, as an employee of Roulette, it's pronounced Roulette.
Joe Sidney: Is it supposed to be like Russian roulette?
Jeff Tobias: Correct.
Joe Sidney: That's French.
Jeff Tobias: It's Russian.
Joe Sidney: Nope. No.
Jeff Tobias: Nope.
Joe Sidney: Not since I checked. No.
Jeff Tobias: Um, okay.
Joe Sidney: Well, someone overheard you talking about you having big plans for 2023.
Jeff Tobias: I’ll be releasing the original soundtrack to that podcast [“Milky Way Underground”] I worked on with
Grant Stewart.
Dave Ruder and
Gold Bolus will be putting that out.
Joe Sidney: And vocally?
Jeff Tobias: I'm writing another album of songs where I sing; I’m hoping to try and finish recording that sometime this spring and ideally release it before the end of 2023. But that's a sort of a fingers crossed scenario.
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photo: Peter Kerlin
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Joe Sidney: We haven't talked about me yet.
Jeff Tobias: Let's get into you.
Joe Sidney: We were talking about other firsts and we're also talking about oral traditions. It's amazing.
Tiers La Familia is the first band that's not your band that you've uh– do you understand what I'm trying to say? Is this your first dog? Is Tiers La Familia your first dog and pony show?
Jeff Tobias: I don’t know what that means.
Joe Sidney: Man. No, I really don’t know what that means either. But was that your first experience putting out a record that's not your record?
Jeff Tobias: Well, yes, because I've never had a record label before.
Joe Sidney: Before. Okay. Talk to me about your record label.
Jeff Tobias: Strategy of Tension was, as you know, initially formed less as a quote-unquote record label, and was sort of like a shell company. It was basically set up to funnel information from quasi-state organizations. But when I released
Recurring Dream, it was like, oh, okay, we can use Strategy of Tension beyond just its initially planned existence.
Joe Sidney: Well, yeah, that guy had so much money, so I mean…
Jeff Tobias: It was the classic thing where if you don't spend the money in your budget, you get a smaller budget next year.
Joe Sidney: Mm.
Jeff Tobias: And you remember what happened with that guy in Greece when he tried to be cute with the money.
Joe Sidney: I… really don’t want to talk about that.
Jeff Tobias: Okay, fair. But– you know, the work you do with Tiers La Familia is obviously a dual purpose thing. Where you've written songs, and they're really good songs, but also there's some subtext in the material that most people won't even really recognize.
Joe Sidney: Right.
Jeff Tobias: I mean, the funny thing about the Tiers [albums] is that we didn't even [publicly acknowledge] a lot of the people who contributed.
Joe Sidney: I know.
Jeff Tobias: And at this point I almost feel like we shouldn't even really go any further into it, but it's just worth acknowledging that there's a lot more going on.
Joe Sidney: Right. And how much does that influence your 2023 slate of releases? I don't think we're in the same situation that we were in two years ago, so do you have the need to do that again in 2023?
Jeff Tobias: It's really gonna depend on a lot of factors. I think it's gonna depend on what happens with the European energy crisis.
Joe Sidney: I do owe you a “banger tape 3” in 2023.
Jeff Tobias: I will collect on that. We're also going to release the new
Feast of the Epiphany album on tape in February; it's amazing.
Joe Sidney: I joined Twitter in January of 2022. How do you think that suggestion has aged?
Jeff Tobias: I'm always gonna feel kind of guilty about that. It was well intended. I think you probably realize at this point that there was a lot going on there that even I wasn't aware of.
Joe Sidney: You toured right up to European quarantine in 2020 with
Modern Nature. You returned to Europe with
Brigid Dawson in 2021 in the middle of covid restrictions. You’re in Europe a lot. Suss.
Jeff Tobias: Sure. Absolutely. Well, um, the tour with Bridget Dawson in ‘21 was incredibly precarious.
Joe Sidney: What is a synonym for precarious?
Jeff Tobias: I'm trying to think of another word.
Joe Sidney: Yeah. Like for kids.
Jeff Tobias: We were nervous. We were nervous about catching covid and ruining the tour.
Joe Sidney: Right. Okay.
Jeff Tobias: We were really lucky.
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photo: James Robert Sharp
• • •
Joe Sidney: So I wanted to talk about what we have to do as creative people. If I'm gonna talk about 2022, I'm gonna talk about people who are running with us, and people who are not running with us anymore.
Jeff Tobias: Yeah. Yeah. That's an important part of the story of 2022.
Joe Sidney: So the two music names that come up for me in 2022, if you asked me – and I had to think about it also, because I think so many people are dropping. So at that rate, it's very easy to forget a huge amount of people who are, you know, losing their battles or, or just, you know, expiring.
Jeff Tobias: Yes.
Joe Sidney: The big names for me are
Pharaoh Sanders and
jaimie branch.
Jeff Tobias: Yes.
Joe Sidney: If you have the cassette version of “Just How I Feel”, in the pamphlet, there’s a large list of people. Roscoe Mitchell, et cetera. Um, as far as 2022, jaimie branch and Pharoah Sanders down – what do they mean to you? How has that relationship changed now that they're not here? And what is our responsibility?
Jeff Tobias: Well, I'm really glad you brought that up because earlier in the conversation you were accusing me of having a good year. I had to agree, but I also had to wedge in there, uh, this complicating…
Joe Sidney: Yeah.
Jeff Tobias: I can say a couple things. jaimie branch was loved by everyone who ever met her, but I think there was also a fear for her health amidst people who knew her as well. Because she was, to her credit, very public about her struggles.
Joe Sidney: Yeah.
Jeff Tobias: And lived exactly how she wanted to live. And I think that right now, I feel very activated in the sense that I feel very protective of my people.
Joe Sidney: Right.
Jeff Tobias: Because I have other friends who have struggles. Everyone's got struggles to a certain extent. And I have this fantasy where we are all gonna cross the finish line at the same time. Yeah. But of course, we all know that that's not how it works. And especially after losing
Ellen O'Meara–
Joe Sidney: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Tobias: –who kept her struggles really under wraps, I think unless you were very close with her, it makes me worry about my people and it makes me want to protect them and reach out to them and make sure they know that they're loved and that they're valued. And I want them to be with me through as much of this process of being on earth as possible.
Joe Sidney: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Tobias: As far as Pharoah Sanders goes, he is one of my top, top influences on the way I play the saxophone. And he also has had a huge impact on me in terms of how I think about what music is, and it can do, and what it's capable of. And I might have gone through my whole life without ever hearing Pharoah Sanders if it wasn't for my dad, because my dad helped me get into Pharaoh Sanders at a really important age. And I don't know if you know this, Joe, I don't know if I told you this, but Pharoah passed within a day of the two year anniversary of my father leaving the planet.
Joe Sidney: Oh.
Jeff Tobias: Yeah. And there's a part of me that's inclined to kind of just say, “oh, how about that.” That's–
Joe Sidney: Coincidence.
Jeff Tobias: But then there's another part of me that feels reassured by the connection.
Joe Sidney: I understand.
Jeff Tobias: I think you're right that those were two really important people who left us this year. But the thing this was, this was a, this was a year where the decline in life expectancy for Americans came home for me and a lot of other people. Because we lost Daniel Levine.
Joe Sidney: Yeah.
Jeff Tobias: Daniel Levine, he's in the
Just What I Feel liner notes too. And jaimie and Daniel were both alive when I wrote those liner notes.
Joe Sidney: I know.
Jeff Tobias: Daniel was someone who I met at Brooklyn College, who was one of the first people in New York who I improvised with. He hipped me to that George Lewis essay, um, “Improvised Music After…”
Joe Sidney: “After 1950.” Yep.
Jeff Tobias: And Daniel passed away. We found out about his passing the same week that that New York Times article got written about me, Dave Ruder and Joe White.
Joe Sidney: Right, right. That Brooklyn College trifecta.
Jeff Tobias: Yeah. Yeah. Dave Ruder’s label Gold Bolus released an album by Daniel Levine, so we were all connected.
Joe Sidney: Yeah, I want that hyperlink too.
Jeff Tobias: Sure. Yes. His band was called
Knuckleball. I just can't really conceive of any real reason why Daniel’s, and my situation, couldn't have been the opposite. He was talented, he was incredibly talented, and it could have been his good year and my bad year.
Joe Sidney: Right.
Jeff Tobias: And then there are people like
Forrest Gray and
Bernard Pearce and
Ginny Benson. And it’s staggering to think of how many… I've talked it over with my musician friends, and some people have said, ‘You know, it's a hard life being a musician. You're going to be susceptible to substance abuse, and you're going to be vulnerable to depression, and you're not going to have enough money to live a healthy life in terms of your physical and mental health.’ And all those things are true, but, but this feels more significant. It feels like – and I think that this is a pretty obvious thing – but in hard times, the most vulnerable people have it the hardest.
Joe Sidney: Yes.
Jeff Tobias: Basically what I'm taking away from all of this is an enhanced hope to guard my friends and to keep my friends close and to talk with them and let them know they're loved and try to lift people up and also reach out to other people when I'm not feeling good. Keep our community close in a way that we haven't been able to be for a long time now.
Joe Sidney: You’re absolutely right.
Jeff Tobias: Yeah, I think that's all I got right now.
Joe Sidney: No, no, no, that's fine. That's everything I prepared.
Jeff Tobias: This is good. You know, cuz Joe, I don't know if I told you this, but I was thinking about writing an essay about like, wow, I had a very good year, but then a lot of people I know died and I don't know how to feel about all that.
Joe Sidney: Yeah.
Jeff Tobias: So this actually, this saves me the trouble of having to do that. And, it's also really fun. It's a fun talk. So I'm really glad, I appreciate you asking me to do this.
Joe Sidney: Thank you. I mean, I, I think you're welcome. I don't know which one.
