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Chris Alan Durham Interview

Chris Durham is best known for his tenure in Roachclip and The Bibs. Alongside Travis Galloway, he runs All Gone records.

From Downriver, Michigan, Durham formed All Gone to release tapes by his friends in Detroit, as well as records by his band, Roachclip. All Gone has expanded, releasing more than 40 titles, including cassettes by The Intended, Mad Nanna and The Cannanes.

After Roachclip, Durham formed The Bibs with Galloway and Alex Franzen. The group’s LP on Soft Abuse, From the Fish Houses, was one of the best releases of 2016.

Currently, Durham is focusing on Church Shuttle and releases under his own name. Soft Abuse just released a Church Shuttle 7”; an upcoming solo single by Durham will be out on Spacecase this summer.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Ryan: I know you’re from Southwest Detroit, but I don’t know much else about your background. I’m thirty-six. I’m probably a little older than you.

Chris: I’m thirty-one now. I’m getting older. I grew up in Downriver, which borders Southwest Detroit. I’ve been living in Southwest Detroit for a while now. That’s where I record most of my music. I recorded the Bibs (From the Fish Houses) and Roachclip (Discovery Park) records there. I started in Downriver, playing music in Detroit when I was fourteen or fifteen. We’d play shows in Hamtramck.

Ryan: This would’ve been the early 2000s?

Chris: I probably played my first show in 2003 or 2004. I grew up in the industrial part of town. It was blue collar with factories.

Ryan: Were your parents into music or was it something you discovered on your own?

Chris: They were into classic rock and country music. Aerosmith and Zeppelin. They liked Alice Cooper. He was from around here.

Ryan: Detroit’s a major music city. But by the time you were growing up, the impacts of deindustrialization—namely, job and population loss—were already well underway.

Chris: Totally. By the time I was growing up, everything was already on a steady decline. My grandparents and parents are from Detroit. By the ‘70s, people were already leaving. At its peak, Detroit had almost two million people. I think we’re down to around 700,000 now. However, there are millions of people in the Detroit Metro area. Everyone kind of lives around the city. It’s a populated area, but a lot of it isn’t technically in the city.

Ryan: Weren’t you doing more experimental music before Roachclip?

Chris: Yeah. Some of my early projects included the tape label my friends from Downriver and I started: All Gone. That was around 2007 or 2008. We had a concept of not using the internet. We were anti-internet at the time. The goal was to keep the label subterranean. We created mailers we’d send out about upcoming releases.

Ryan: You were taking the label back to the Forced Exposure era.

Chris: Right. Everyone was using the internet in 2007. Back then, we were doing garage recordings. Not “garage music,” but literally recording music in garages. The music I was making back then was more experimental than the music I’m doing now. I used alternate tunings and I didn’t record with drums. I was influenced by New Zealand stuff, Harry Pussy and Jandek. There were electronic elements to my early recordings. I was into krautrock.

Ryan: You have “Song for Guy Debord” on the Roachclip LP, Discovery Park. It fits in with the concept of not wanting a simulated environment on the internet, but meeting people face-to-face.

Chris: He has a big influence on my music. Not on the sound, but on the mindset of how I approach it. Debord is just as big an influence on me as any other musician.

Ryan: Where did you meet All Gone co-founder Travis Galloway?

Chris: We grew up a few blocks away from each other. I first met him when I was younger through skateboarding. I met up with him again at a party in my twenties. He asked me, “Didn’t we grow up a few blocks away from each other?” I said, “Yeah, we did.” It was kind of cool. We knew a lot about each other, but we never really hung out until our twenties.

Ryan: All Gone was strictly cassettes at the beginning, correct?

Chris: It was all cassettes. All Gone was just the bands Travis and I were doing. I was doing a project with my friend Trever (Millay), who’s in the band You. They released records on Dais. Trever went into a more minimal, synth-type direction. Steve Gougherty, who was in Roachclip, was doing some solo stuff. The label started as a result of Travis and I hanging out, fighting off boredom. We were putting out a lot of solo recordings by our friends. We then started reaching out to other people and bands.

We were all doing noisier stuff back then. You mentioned Heath (Moerland), who was also in Roachclip, earlier. Heath is sort of the king of Michigan basement noise. Heath was coming up with really good murky and psych-influenced noise.

We started getting out of that stuff. Every show we’d attend was just a massive wall of feedback. We wanted to mix it up. We wanted to be noisy, but less harsh. Our music started becoming more conventional.

Ryan: Going back to the 1980s, experimental and noise music really lent itself to the low-overheads and long-playing time of cassette tapes.

Chris: All Gone was coming from that background. Also, most of my friends growing up recorded on 4-tracks. That’s pretty much all we used.

Ryan: The Tascam Portastudios?

Chris: Right—the Tascam Portastudios. The blue guys. My friends Alex Franzen and Steve Gougherty were recording on those. I learned a lot from them. I’ve always been around tapes. I never learned how to use computers when I was younger. My parents weren’t into them. All we had at home was an outdated computer that always got viruses.

Ryan: Computers weren’t yet accessible to everyone. I graduated high school in 2000, and I’m almost certain I used an electric typewriter the whole way through. My dad was a cabinetmaker.

Chris: Yeah, they weren’t really around. I chat with people who record onto computer and I feel left behind—like I need to take a computer science course.

Ryan: An interesting, early All Gone release was the Cannanes Happy Swing cassette reissue. How did that come about?

Chris: That release was pretty cool and random. I love all of that ‘80s DIY stuff, especially from New Zealand. I realize The Cannanes are from Australia, but I like bands from that general region. I started getting into K Records and The Go Team. I like Steve Fisk. The tape stuff he was doing back then was really cool.

I got the Cannanes tape and I really liked it. I felt that it needed to be back out in the world again. The aesthetic we were going for—the Cannanes owned it on that tape. I got on the internet and contacted them. They were really into reissuing it.

It’s funny. I was trying to contact Calvin Johnson at the time. Calvin had gotten wind that I had reissued Happy Swing (which was originally released on K). He was down for it. I sent him some copies. He sold out of them and I sent him some more. Calvin was chill.

Ryan: So it was after the fact that K had found out about the reissue?

Chris: Yeah. I didn’t even put anything on the tape about K. I had been trying to get ahold of Calvin beforehand, but I couldn’t track him down. I was happy to send him stuff. I wanted to get the tape out again and for him to know about it. Calvin wrote me later on, mentioning that he wanted to meet up. He kept thinking I lived in Wisconsin. I had to break it to him that I lived in Michigan.

I wish someone else would reissue some of that K stuff, especially the Go Team tapes. I don’t know if Calvin has plans for it. A lot of the early K stuff is really amazing.

Ryan: I only know Roachclip through the band’s catalog.

Chris: Compared to The Bibs, Roachclip was a little more functional. We played in Chicago and Ohio a few times. We toured the East Coast with the K9 Sniffies for eight days. We didn’t too much lengthy touring, just a lot of gigs in Detroit and Ann Arbor. We cut that record (Discovery Park), a couple of tapes and some 7”s. There are some Roachclip recordings that have never come out. I’m not sure if they ever will or not.

Ryan: Roachclip’s Discovery Park (2013) has been All Gone’s only LP so far, right?

Chris: That’s the only LP we’ve done. All Gone’s released some 7”s, including a Mole House record that features some of the Mad Nanna dudes. We did an Intended 7” which was a Tyvek side-project band. We did a Tracey Trance 7” too.

Ryan: You and Michael (Zulicki) from Mad Nanna seem really simpatico. I know Mad Nanna toured with The Bibs.

Chris: I can’t recall how I met Michael. It was a while ago. I think we became aware of each other’s work through mail orders, places like Volcanic Tongue and Fusetron. We got in contact and started trading releases. We were both interested in a similar aesthetic. We’ve been friends for about five years now. We’re pretty diehard pen pals.

Michael came out to Michigan and we did a small tour together. I actually played drums for Mad Nanna on that tour. That was a cool experience. Our first show was in Columbus. Kevin Failure, the Pink Reason dude, booked it. That was a really good basement show. Mad Nanna’s drummer couldn’t make the tour, so I told Michael I’d do it. The first night was a little rough. I started out with a full drum set, but by the end of the night the kit was whittled down to three pieces. I was playing standing up. By Cleveland, I got the hang of it. I have recordings from that tour and the Chicago and Cleveland dates are the best. We’ve been meaning to get those out for a while now.

Ryan: The Bibs’ From the Fish Houses (2016) is my favorite record you’ve cut so far.

Chris: Thanks. I’m pretty proud of that record. It was a cool experience. The Bibs was me and my friends Travis (Galloway) and Alex (Franzen), who I grew up making music with. Alex and I had a bond going back to when we were teenagers. There was also some strife. Alex was junked out pretty bad. It was hard to get recording time in. He was in and out of rehab. I was simply glad the record got made and that it was with the whole band. The first tape, Everyday I Nap, was me and Alex. The second tape, Waiting for Alex, was cut when he was in rehab and was about him. Waiting for Alex was me and Travis. From the Fish Houses was recorded when Alex got out.

I loved the Bibs. The tour with Mad Nanna was actually when the band ended. Alex literally disappeared on that tour. We raged really hard in Chicago. We had a day off before the Cleveland show, which is only a couple of hours from Detroit. Alex just left. We didn’t know where he was for about two years. Alex is doing really well now. I didn’t expect a good ending to that story.

Ryan: You have Quilt Boy and Church Shuttle going currently. Church Shuttle is getting back to the experimental music you were cutting years earlier.

Chris: Yeah. After Alex left, it didn’t feel right to carry on as The Bibs. Alex was too crucial. I started recording the Quilt Boy stuff. I wanted that to be a solo project. There was just so much going on with the bands that I had been in. The Quilt Boy material was all over the place. It was electronic, but also prog and folk. I just kept making tapes. Sophomore Lounge hit me up about doing a Roachclip 7”. I told them Roachclip wasn’t a band anymore, but I sent them the Quilt Boy stuff which led to the “I Am Somebody” 7”. I recorded and played all of the music on that release. I was attempting to record nihilistic prog tracks in my basement. I lived in Philadelphia for a while; when I got back to Detroit, I put together a band for Quilt Boy. We built some momentum, played the Cropped Out Fest in Louisville (in 2016), but it kind of fizzled out. Everyone was involved in so many other bands.

I’ve been focusing more on Church Shuttle. I’ve been doing Church Shuttle for a while now. It’s definitely the most experimental stuff that I do. Church Shuttle has a 7” that’ll be out soon on Soft Abuse. I’m excited about that. Church Shuttle is all stream of consciousness. I try to push myself sonically with that project.

Ryan: You’ve been recording under your own name as well. We have that 7” coming out (on Spacecase).

Chris: I did a tape under my own name for All Gone about a year ago. That was just to get back to playing more conventional music. I wanted to play guitar again and write songs. Heath (Moerland) said he’d play drums for me. We plan to do some live shows. I’m interested in getting a band going for that material. I might keep it under my own name and get a proper backing band. A singer-songwriter deal. I never thought about doing that. I’m in my thirties. Maybe it’s time to be the singer-songwriter guy now.

Ryan: What’s on the horizon with All Gone?

Chris: I’m being a little lazy right now, but we do have things lined up. I have a Yureka Cash tape planned. She’s a friend of mine from Philly who’s also had a release on No Rent. It’s weirdo music that’s sort of hard to describe. We’re trying to get a Mad Nanna live record out. Also scheduled is a C10 release of five unreleased Bibs tracks and a Heaven Copy tape. Heaven Copy is my friend David Sutton from Philly. He also does LXV who’s released tapes on Soft Abuse. I think we’re doing a Creode tape. That’s going to be my weird, synth basement tape. It’s in the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) zone. Dennis Duck-type stuff. We’re big fans of that around here.

Ryan: I went to a LAFMS retrospective about five years ago. To this day, Tom Recchion and the rest of the LAFMS remain underappreciated, even in Los Angeles.

Chris: I think so. What they were doing was really subterranean. There was nothing commercial about their music and they didn’t care. It’s some of the most interesting music from that time period.

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