John Morand’s story begins and currently resides in Richmond, but like the best of Hobbits and one-night stands, he’s been ‘there and back again’ many times. He’s the co-founder of Sound of Music recording studios downtown and the engineer / producer behind nearly everything good that comes from Richmond – including GWAR, Lamb of God, Inquisition, Souvenir’s Young America, Carbon Leaf, Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker, Sparklehorse – not to name drop or anything.
He, with his band, Scott’s Addiction, just dropped a new album Crushed by Covid …Songs Lost to the Virus with collaborators Keely Burn of The Tea Lights, Doc Thomas of DirtyMetalLefty, Mike Linn, Chrissy Lozano Bass of Piranha Rama, David Lowery of Cracker, Charles Nill and many others. The new single impresses as just a great song, but also conjures reminiscences of mid-to-late 90’s “Alternative Rock”, before that appellation lost its teeth to industry-manufactured clones of good bands. Either way, it’s pure 120 Minutes-bait – swingy and soul-worn, swirly like a lazy curl caught in a breeze, dancing on a furrowed brow. He takes the mic and wields his guitar on this effort, eschewing his usual spot behind the drums, or more consistently, in the engineering booth surrounded by knobs and sliders. He’s definitely there too on this track, but being in the performer’s spotlight ups the ante for us at RVA.
RVA magazine has been in communication with John for many years – always on our radar, new single or not. He means the world to so many musicians in this city, a true veteran of every scene. Our very own Rick Rubin, a local Steve Albini. It gives us no small pleasure to catch up with him again upon his new release. He had a lot to say about the single, but had more to add about the context and environment such a song was born of.
Christian Detres: What’s up John?! There are probably a lot of our readers that are just being introduced to your legend here in Richmond. Tell us a little bit about yourself?
John Morand: I started off making punk rock records, and then one day, 30 years ago or so, I opened the Sound of Music recording studio. One of my first big records was Sparklehorse. That helped to define the Lo-Fi sound I’m known for and make it a thing. That’s always been a part of what I do.
A lot of what you hear on this new track, “Needs of the Narcissist,” comes from the people who played on the record. I attracted some younger musicians who were influenced by those sounds. But then, you know, guys from Cracker and some established rock star types contributed too—so it’s just a cool mix. I didn’t want my record to sound too slick, like, “Oh, this is a producer’s record.” I wanted the songs and the rocking-out vibe to speak louder than the production.
There’s a happy messiness to it, but there’s also a fairly wide range of moods. We call this video for “Stars of Orion” the “lost” video. We shot it right when COVID started. The whole inspiration for this project coming out now was that I had found a hard drive with this video footage from, like, two weeks before COVID started.
My music partner, Keely, and I went to Los Angeles and filmed all this footage. It was supposed to be our next single, and then everything just kind of got shut down. So we never did anything with it, never released it. None of the songs ever got put up on streaming. So when I found that hard drive, I was like, “Wow, I should go ahead and just finish this. Put it up because nobody’s heard it.” I got things remixed and updated a little bit. It’s a pretty poppy electronic song, but the album also has a Southern Gothic and Americana kind of vibe.
CD: I love the description.
JM: That aesthetic comes from the Neil Young tradition. You know, I’m not the strongest singer in the world. So it’s not going to be me, like, belting it out.
CD: But that’s the art form inherent to your style, isn’t it? It never really required belting it out. It just required you to be honest, which is closer to the punk aesthetic we both come from.
If I had to characterize the decade, the ’90s were filled with people who had beautiful, big, booming voices—the Chris Cornells of the world—for sure. But quirk and gravel, anywhere from Nick Cave to Pavement, were just as important and admired. They weren’t crooners, but you trusted the voice, you trusted the words, because you trusted the sincerity of their poetry.
That counts for a lot in art, whether inside or outside of music. You don’t need to be Mariah Carey to be on the stage.
JM: I was motivated to re-release this specific track now because of Trump. “The Needs of the Narcissist” video at the time it was shot was like, “Well, isn’t this funny? Our president is such a narcissist”, but now it’s like, downright scary.
CD: But isn’t that the path of narcissism anyway? I mean it, there’s never de-escalation. Attention and status has to escalate, or else. Like heroin. There’s no plateau for a narcissist, it’s always it’s got to be more and more attention. More shock. It’s an addiction like any other, in my experience.
JM: It was written before Trump was indicted, but I was ready to put out some political content
as a necessary protest.
CD: We get overwhelmed by political talk because it’s constant in the Trump era. “Guess What Trump Just Said!!” content is shoved at you so much in 2024 that bringing politics up at all feels like a social faux pas.
Growing up in the ’80s with skate punk and thrash hardcore scenes, politics in our music was ubiquitous. Fucking with Reagan was almost the entire point of the genre. Then you get to, maybe, the Blink-182 era, where trying to sneak out of our mom’s house to go kiss Susie down the street is your big statement? It just seemed a bit weak. Punk lost its teeth in general.
Clearly, there are and were still bands that made powerful statements with fearless integrity, but that no longer defines the genre, right? Punk has always had juvenile poop and penis humor, like Richard Hell’s “Love Comes in Spurts” or Fear’s “More Beer,” but the subversiveness of punk never took a back seat until it was being sold on Nickelodeon.
JM: Rappers still get to have fun with it, but that’s about it. The fact that a malignant narcissist can draw in, and speak to, an association of evangelists, and have them all stand up and applaud is absurd. It’s absurd.
CD: The idea that anyone takes that man seriously is baffling. I’d love to hear you talk about Absurdism in modern existence. As you are singing about the needs of narcissists, you’re singing about something that is patently absurd. How do we wind up in this spot? How do you approach the absurdity of this world?
JM: Well, it’s funny because, on the micro level or whatever, we all deal with various degrees of narcissism in our interactions with people. Most importantly, our own habits can be judged through the lens of narcissism.
This song wasn’t originally written about Trump. Originally, like every other good rock song, it was a love song. And then, when the term “narcissist” started getting thrown around for Trump a lot, I was like, “Oh, my God, it applies to him too well to not shift the intent of the verse.”
There’s a special power in the whole concept of fake news. The concept of alternative facts has become so heavily normalized, and the kind of behavior that Trump can get away with on a daily basis is such par for the course—
CD: We’ve gaslit ourselves into a toxic relationship with reality. I know there’s pushback, and it’s not new. It’s been happening, but it’s getting louder and stronger. People are gaining more confidence in it. There is exuberance pushing Harris forward—or maybe just a desperate need to not listen to another fucking word out of that orange windbag’s puckered face. Even if you aren’t the most enthusiastic about her personally as a candidate, any enthusiasm at all feels good. Some sort of optimism, some sort of looking past the terror of every fucking day this decade, is welcome.
We grew up in a time when there were significantly fewer freedoms and less acceptance for gay people. There were much worse interactions with police for Black people and much less opportunity and respect for women. If you’re young and can’t conceive of that, believe me, you’re lucky. And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever spent a single moment in my life, back in those decades, more concerned or worried about the future of these things. Because all of those issues seemed like they were in the process of getting solved.
I’ve mentioned this recently—it seems like we’re having the same conversations we were having back in 1992. How is this possible?
JM: I remember the summer of 2020. Even though COVID sucked and everything, people were skateboarding on the monuments! And there was still this sense of progress. Then all of a sudden— I like the term ‘creeping surrealism’—over the last year and a half, Trump started gaining this weird momentum from the Supreme Court.
The night of the debate, I had a physical reaction. I couldn’t watch it. I turned it off. During COVID, I thought, “People don’t even have toilet paper; they don’t need to hear my sad song about how some girl was mean to me,” or whatever. I really took a break from writing songs and playing guitar, and I had to start learning again—like getting my finger calluses back up and everything—to speak about all this nonsense.
CD: Are you planning to take this message to the stage anytime soon?
JM: Everybody’s excited about playing live sometime soon. Everyone in my band is in like six different bands, so it’s a scheduling thing.
CD: That’s what happens when you’re good and have incredible partners. It’s a good problem to have.
JM: I played drums in bands for years, in touring bands. To be the front person and lead guitarist is a whole different experience.
CD: How do you like it?
JM: I love it. I love performing. And Keely Burn, my singer and keyboard player, is great. I got a bunch of cool people to help me: everybody from Wayne Pooley, Bruce Hornsby’s engineer (also the engineer on GWAR’s Scumdogs of the Universe!), Bob Strickler, who also works for War on Drugs and bands like that, to this kid, Dustin “Deuce” Scott, who’s more of an R&B or pop mixer—he mixed the next music video—and my partner, Dano Deckerman. So that was really cool, bringing in some outside help. We will try to do something this fall with some political value. One of our last shows was for Spanberger and some other people. We’ll probably do something over the fall.
CD: What can you say about this place that has kept you here?
JM: It was quite a good place to start a studio because, first of all, we had so much local talent. I’ve had a studio for 30 years, and we have such an amazing music scene. I used to do a lot of work in Europe, and I’d be in some small town in Belgium, and they would always know the name of, like, five punk bands from Richmond. Punk rock was always one of our biggest exports. They would know Strike Anywhere and all these other bands I had recorded. We’ve made our mark. There’s nothing to flee from—we have it all here.
Luckily, Richmond has evolved quite a bit too. I mean, the studio moved eight times over 30 years. We started in Jackson Ward, then moved to Downtown, to the Arts District, to the Fan, and finally to Scott’s Addition. We bought the building in Scott’s Addition five years ago, and I was like, “Okay, well, we’ll never have to move again.” But then it became worth so much money that, you know, my partners and I sold the building so they can build another condo there, or whatever.
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John and I went into a looong walk down memory lane at this point. All the favorite RVA places gone and shuttered, names remembered that belong to forgotten faces, favorite albums and songs from the Richmond horde. It was as rambling as that kind of discussion deserves. A trip with no destination. I think I’ll hold on to that for myself. Seriously though, meet this guy. He has nothing but interesting things to say, and a ton more great music in him.
