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The Muffins often referred to themselves as a “band of brothers”. It’s easy to see why. Spending 50 years together making music, and living in the same house for many of the early years, is no doubt a very bonding experience. Having spent some time with all of them in two in-depth interviews, it surprises me how these very different individuals were able to pull this off. They of course had their ups and downs over that lengthy time, but even when they seemed to fall apart, something would bring them back together. And it wasn’t just their music. The emotional bond they formed simply could not be broken … no matter how hard they tried.
With them through all of it was Cuneiform Records founder Steve Feigenbaum. Every member of the band credits him with making the Baker’s Dozen Box Set a reality. He didn’t initiate the project, but after the band spent nearly 2 years arguing over what should and should not be included in the box, Steve stepped in and offered to curate the project. By this time, the days of playing live Muffins music together were well and truly over. It was time to go through their massive archive of recordings and show us all what those 50 years together were like.
In Part 1 of the interview, along with Steve we met Paul Sears the drummer and Tom Scott the reed man as well as many other instruments. Paul was the energetic go-getter – the de facto manager if you will of the band. Tom described himself as the chief financial officer of the band, maintaining a “voice of reason” with the others when he believed some plans were getting ready to go off the rails.
Related Story - Part 1
In Part 2 we meet Billy Swann the bass player and Dave Newhouse the keyboardist and for many years the principal songwriter. When Dave talks about the writing process, he emphasizes how much he enjoyed the rest of the band dirtying up his initially clean compositions. He called this process “Muffinizing”. I found Billy to be the most laid-back member of the group. While Dave tried to be measured and thoughtful in his responses, Billy would just say whatever came off the top of his head. Interviewing the two of them together was quite a treat.
Some of the stories Dave and Billy told me were similar to what we heard in Part 1, and yet very different in their details and perspective. We find out, for instance, that a mysterious hitchhiker character played a big role in how the band first got started. We also hear more details about the house that they would eventually all live in, rehearse in, and record in. Billy found the place and remembers the wonderful 90 year-old neighbors that were very friendly to the musical hippies living next to them. The house included an expansive field where the band built a stage and performed free concerts.
We also get more details on their DIY record label Random Radar Records. They talk about similar labels around the country that influenced them to do their own. RRR’s more than 10 releases included the first LP by the Art Bears featuring Chris Cutler, Dagmar Krause, and Fred Frith. More about their growing relationship with Fred comes out later in the interview.
The early years of The Muffins were not kind to their drummers. As the bass player, Billy goes into details about his relationship with the drummers, and how the rotating door finally stopped when Paul arrived at the house.
When the band got invited to play Giorgio Gomelsky’s Zu Manifestival in NYC in 1978, they kept mentioning how they felt like sight-seeing country folks in the big city. This confused me a bit since they were from DC, a major metropolis itself. I understood it better when they described the laid-back hippy lifestyle they were leading at their suburban house with the large lot. It was indeed a country-like setting on the fringes of DC. But NYC in 1978 was not only big, it was very intimidating on first visit. They soon assimilated into the community of musicians gathered for the festival and found themselves wanting more of NYC.
It was at the Zu Manifestival that they would finally meet Fred Frith in person after having released some of his music on the RRR label. Billy would end up playing a set at the fest with Fred and a few others in a hastily formed group. This was part of the second half of the 12+ hour long festival that included avant-progressive bands like The Muffins. Dave and Billy don’t remember much about the first half which featured the No Wave bands. One band name stuck in their minds all these years …. Blinding Headache (featuring Rick Brown who will appear in an upcoming interview on The Non-Writer).
A few short months after the Zu Fest, The Muffins would host their own festival in DC featuring many of the musicians they had just met in NYC. Dave talks about an angry phone call he got from Gomelsky when he caught wind of their plans. Eventually, Giorgio would travel down to The Muffin House for a visit. By then he was in a better mood. Over a spaghetti and meatball dinner that he prepared for them, he tried to convince them to go to Europe where they would find their audience. Not everyone in the band was buying his pitch, but they all enjoyed the meatballs. (In Part 1 Steve remembers doing the dishes.) Both Dave and Billy talk about their impressions of Giorgio.
In 1981 The Muffins released their album called 185. It would be their first time working with an outside producer. The person they hired for this was Fred Frith. A lot was riding on this LP, at least in the minds of The Muffins, and when it didn’t do so well, the band started to grind to a halt. You can see the pain on Dave’s face as he tries to describe this time. Of course, the end of one thing is often the beginning of another, and that was the case for both Dave and Billy. And for The Muffins it would not be the end. Not yet.
Dave would get invited to join Fred Frith and Tom Cora in their new band Skeleton Crew. His earlier wish to get more of NYC would now come true. He moved there to rehearse with the band before they embarked on a tour of Europe. Joining them on that tour would be a guy from that No Wave band Dave remembered from the Zu Fest. It was Rick Brown in his new band called V-Effect. When Dave got back from that tour, he never got a chance to go into the studio with Skeleton Crew. Much later, Frith would release a double CD of live Skeleton Crew called Free Dirt. Some of Dave’s performances are on it. Frith described getting on stage each night with this band like being on a runaway train. Dave remembered the feeling well.
Billy would find work in a popular new wave band called Urban Verbs. This DC band had connections to the Talking Heads and were recommended to a major label by Brian Eno. They had released two albums on Warner Bros. by the time Billy joined them for a European tour. He talks about finding a taste of the rock-n-roll lifestyle with this band getting the star treatment, complete with roadies and … other things.
The Muffins hiatus would eventually come to an end. They would be invited by Steve to contribute a track to a compilation album he was putting out called Unsettled Scores, which Steve described as Cuneiform artists covering other Cuneiform artists. The artists covering a Muffins song were two members from the most famous prog band in DC at the time – Happy the Man. Dave describes the close relationship that some of the Muffins had with the guys from Happy the Man over the years.
In the years that followed this initial reunion, the band would get invited to play several festivals both in the US and Europe. The guys talk about how much they enjoyed getting together almost every summer for a couple of weeks of living in the same house again and rehearsing every day. Dave referred to these times as “Muffins Summer Camp”.
The Muffins played their last live gig in 2015. As the years passed, Paul “the instigator” once again could not let things rest. “We’ve got all this archival material guys, we should do something with it.” At first, what they tried to do with it was not working at all, but Steve stepped in and saved it, much to the delight of every band member, who are all thankful to Steve for doing such a great job.
It was a big project that took a “band of brothers” to see it through. So, what do they think of when they hear 50 years of Muffins music played back to them today? I’ll give Billy the last word: “Damn we were good.”
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Look for the box set The Muffins - Baker's Dozen at:
The Muffins - Baker's Dozen Part 2