The Muffins - Baker's Dozen
Interview with Muffins’ Paul Sears & Tom Scott, and Cuneiform Record’s Steve Feigenbaum
Interview with Steve, Paul and Tom:
This is a story about a band of brothers. For 50 years The Muffins made avant-progressive music. In the mid 70’s they all moved into the same house where they would build a studio and rehearse for several hours a day. Having few peers in their home base of Washington DC, they reached out across the ocean and formed a bond with like minded avant-garders Henry Cow from England. They pooled their money with other DC area friends and formed their own record label called Random Radar, pioneering the DIY ethic that would become more associated with punk than prog.
The convenience of having the band under the same roof every day created ample time to develop the complex songs they had swirling through their heads. These jamming and writing sessions took a toll on their drummers, several of whom would take an early exit from the band before Paul Sears would land behind the kit. What became the Muffins core had now formed with Dave Newhouse and Tom Scott on winds and keys, Billy Swann on bass and guitar, and Paul on drums.
From the start, Steve Feigenbaum was, and is, friends with them all. He even played music with them in their early days. Eventually, his playing days would wind down and Steve would take what he learned with Random Radar Records and start his own label, Cuneiform Records.
For this interview, I talked with Steve, Paul and Tom. Later, Dave and Billy would share their stories with me, so there’s a part 2 interview coming up with them soon.
Here’s some of what you’ll hear and see in part 1.
A few years ago, the band tried to get a box set going on their own. A couple of years went by before they gave up and handed the project over to Steve.
They are the first and only band so far to officially release live music from the 1978 Zu Manifestival. It appears in the form of one song on the box set.
At the Zu Fest, they witnessed the clash of the avant-progressive bands, of which they were a part, with the anti-music aesthetic of the fairly new and mostly unknown No Wave bands. The audience was put to the test at this 12+ hour long festival, the first half of which showcased the No Wave bands that many, maybe most, of the audience did not seem to like. Steve’s honest accounts on this put into context the jarring nature of this clash of musical cultures.
The producer of the Zu Fest, Giorgio Gomelsky, had almost the entire event recorded. Paul Sears would spend years trying to get a copy of the Muffins performance, only to be blown off by Gomelsky. It would not be until after Gomelsky’s death in 2016 that the tapes would be discovered and restored. Paul would finally get his copy and painstakingly restore it for release on the box set.
The Henry Cow connection was about to pay off now that Fred Frith had moved to NYC just prior to the Zu Fest. The Muffins would work with Fred on his Gravity album and would later hire Fred to produce their second album called 185.
The 185 album did not sell well. On top of that, the music press was becoming very dismissive of what the band was doing. Progressive music of all kinds was no longer taken seriously. In fact it was just the opposite … it was being treated with contempt. The band called it quits in 1981.
In the 1990’s, the band reassembled just for fun, and was invited by Steve to contribute a song for a Cuneiform sampler album. They had so much fun that they eventually decided to test the waters by performing some live gigs, encouraged by newly discovered fan support on the now very public, and very pre-social media, internet forums of the day.
Hearing rumors that the booker for The Knitting Factory in NYC was a big Muffins fan, they wrote to him asking for a gig. Not only did they play the Knitting Factory, they were also invited to play a related festival in Rome.
In the years to follow they would play more festival shows, including RIO (Rock In Opposition festival founded by Henry Cow in 1978) in France in 2009.
Festival shows that appear on the box set include ProgDay 2001 and 2002 in North Carolina, Nearfest 2005 in Pennsylvania (also on the DVD video in the box), and ProgDay 2010.
The Muffins would perform their last show in 2015 at a documentary film debut for the Romantic Warriors DVD on the Canterbury music scene. Only Tom knew at the time that it would be their last show, since for him the band of brothers' bond had been broken with his writing partner.
Working together on the box set would begin the healing process that would restore the band of brothers, although The Muffins would never play again.
Any relationship that lasts more than 50 years is something pretty special. We usually celebrate them with cakes and parties. If we’re extremely lucky, we may have saved a massive archive of material documenting the time. In the end, The Muffins were extremely lucky. Now we all get a chance to take a peek at what it was like to be in this band of brothers.
Look for the box set The Muffins - Baker's Dozen at:
Cuneiform Records on bandcamp:
Thanks for sharing more Muffins memories! Having interviewed these individuals for my own radio show on Takoma Radio /WOWD in Takoma Park, I have heard some of these stories but there's always new things to learn from the four band members and from Steve F.
A BIG thank you, Rick, for these dynamics, informative, heartfelt interviews which shed much light on this band in general, but - more importantly for me - on the Zu Manifestival and Giorgio as it is described from within by artists who were part of it. This has to be the best example I've heard of an event that, besides rare interviews from Giorgio, remains one of the best kept secrets of the era.